A wireless sensor network for underground passages: Remote sensing and wildlife monitoring

Abstract

Abstract This article presents a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system, developed to monitor concealed box‐shaped underground passages to protect wildlife. The system's purpose is to recognize the species of passengers (ie, human, canis, flying species, and so on) without using video sensors (image recognition) through data provided by sensors that measure distance and weight. Moreover, the information provided by the WSN was analyzed via a variety of methods, including a neural pattern recognition network, as well as clustering algorithms, which were able to recognize the species of passengers with certainty scores of over 90%. The main concern for future study is the evaluation of these passages, which are frequently located along main highways, and using data fusion to evaluate low‐cost and low‐power microsensors regarding their effectiveness, that is, whether they are frequently utilized by animals.

Keywords

• remote sensing
• sensor fusion
• wildlife monitoring
• wireless box‐shaped underground passages
• wireless sensor networks