A DTN wireless sensor network for wildlife habitat monitoring

This paper reports on a preliminary study of applying a wireless sensor network using DTN (Delay Tolerant Network) to sample the current status of a certain wildlife mammal with the name of White Tail Deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the WMU Area 47 Ontario, Canada North of Parry Sound district. System architecture is proposed to obtain the highest monitoring range achievable with the least amount of sensors. With this method we can obtain the status of white tail deer, and detect other kinds of animals as well. The current method for surveying the white tail deer needs to be reviewed in order to obtain a most frequent status report of this important animal. By using DTN we expect to obtain disruption support capabilities in our sensor network. Furthermore, we simulated the wildlife habitat monitoring system on the Planet Lab environment. Our future work will develop sensors, deploy them in the field, and create a DTN network for the monitoring of wildlife habitat.