BATS: Dynamic Adaptable Applications for Bats Tracking by Embedded Communicating Systems

Motivation

The motivation of the BATS project is to provide new methodologies for efficient and effective tracking of bats in their natural habitat. Particularly, as an application example, this research project focuses on bats, which are one of the most protected species in the European Union. The developed tracking system for capturing and automatic processing of bats motions should meet a few specific requirements: First, it has to be individual-based, that is, tracing data should be assignable to a particular bat. Second, localization of bats has to be performed with high precision, and third, any contact or interaction between two different bats has to be accounted. For instance, it is asked to make clear statements about the duration female bats are nursing their youngs, but also to study their hunting and general social behavior. Matters like that can only be tracked when mobile sensor nodes are directly mounted on each bat. These kind of nodes need to communicate with both static sensor nodes on the ground, which are distributed among the whole compound, and other mobile nodes.

Fulfilling such requirements and maintaining key aspects such as heterogeneity, scalability, adaptivity, and energy-awareness is a challenging task because of implicitly resulting strict limitations. For instance, the maximum weight the examined bat species can carry amounts to 2g (up to ten percent of its own body weight). Hence, this weight must not be exceeded by the mobile sensors that are mounted on the bats (including batteries, circuits, and antennas). All in all, the mobile nodes should be optimized for

• weight (i.e., the nodes need to be ultra-light),
• shape and size (i.e., designing the nodes so that they are not influencing bats in terms of their natural behavior), and
• energy consumption (i.e., code that is executed on mobile nodes should be as energy-efficient as possible so that nodes can be used without being recharged for several days).

As a consequence thereof, such requirements limit available memory and computation power. Subsequently, hardware components have to be selected wisely and custom circuits need to be synthesized. Doing so, however, not only requires to have energy-aware and adaptive hardware but also protocols and software in general. For this, distributed ad-hoc memory and computation power must be localized and used in an efficient manner. For example, optimal energy management can be achieved by means of pre-aggregation of collected data on the nodes, which is combined with intelligent routing mechanisms that allow for efficient data transfer between all mobile and static nodes.

Solving problems like that is the reason why this research project has been initiated. People with different specialities and orientations are encouraged to work together to find most appropriate solutions. In the end, they will smooth the way for new possible applications in the fields of ecology, biomedicine, behavioral biology, and evolutionary biology.

Software Infrastructure for Resource-Constrained Networked Systems

This sub project's main goal is to provide a flexible system software infrastructure, called ARTE (Adaptive Run-Time Environment for Resource-scarce Sensor Systems). A major challenge is the restricted availability of resources, such as energy and memory, but also ad-hoc network connections. The software infrastructure requires specialized tools for monitoring energy demand and also new techniques to save energy to ensure long runtimes of the node.

In Brunswick, we focus on the development of the system software, running on an animal-borne mobile-node. Key of the development is to conserve as much energy as possible to prolong the runtime and to acquire as much data as possible. However, providing such kind of application requires besides the application itself also software which is able to decode received data and tool support for the biologist to enable reconfiguration on demand. Parts of the systems are already tested successfully in a field test in Gamboa (Panama) which lasts more than 2 month. This test showed, that our software fulfills the requirements of runtime and functionality to provide biologically relevant data.

Now, the second phase is started and focuses on different improvements in terms of energy awareness and functionality like reconfiguration. In sum, the system shall be scaled up to 60 Bats, which raises new questions like how to perform synchronization in an energy efficient way and also how to deal with a huge amount of data which must be transferred to the base-stations network. Scaling up the system enables biologists to observe bigger group sizes like the Desmodus rotundus, a highly social species, which also shares food among group members in their roosts. Tracking this species, will give a deeper insight into the social networks and structure of these individuals.

In upcoming field tests Forchheim (July, 2017) and Panama (September, 2017) the system should be tested intensively and acquire more data than the system before.

Project Partners

• TU Braunschweig, Institute of Operating Systems and Computer Networks (Software Infrastructure)
• Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair for Computer Science (Software Infrastructure)
• Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Leibniz Institute for Evolutionary and Biodiversity Research
• University Paderborn, Chair for Computer and Communication Systems (Communication, Networks)
• Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair for Computer Science (Data Management)
• Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair for Information Technology (Localization, Long-Range Telemetry)
• Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair for Technical Electronics (Hardware-Platform)

Projektmitglieder am IBR

Veröffentlichungen

• Gerald G. Carter, Rachel A. Page, Niklas Duda, Alexander Koelpin, Robert Weigel, Markus Hartmann, Thorsten Nowak, Jörn Thielecke, Michael Schadhauser, Jörg Robert, Sebastian Herbst, Klaus Meyer-Wegener, Peter Wägemann, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Björn Cassens, Rüdiger Kapitza, Falko Dressler, Frieder Mayer Simon P. Ripperger : Thinking small: next-generation sensor networks close the size gap in vertebrate biologging, in PLoS biology, Public Library of Science, 2020 (ripperger2020thinking, DOI, BibTeX)
• Simon Ripperger, Linus Guenther, Hanna Wieser, Niklas Duda, Martin Hierold, Bjoern Cassens, Ruediger Kapitza, Alexander Koelpin and Frieder Mayer: Proximity sensors on common noctule bats reveal evidence that mothers guide juveniles to roosts but not food, in Biological Letters, Royal Society, 2019 (Ripperger2019rs, BibTeX)
• Björn Cassens, Markus Hartmann, Thorsten Nowak, Niklas Duda, Jörn Thielecke, Alexander Kölpin and Rüdiger Kapitza: Bursting: Increasing Energy Efficiency of Erasure-Coded Data in Animal-Borne Sensor Networks, in International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN), Beijing, China, 2019 (cassens2019ewsn, BibTeX)
• Simon Ripperger, Linus Guenther, Hanna Wieser, Niklas Duda, Martin Hierold, Bjoern Cassens, Ruediger Kapitza, Alexander Koelpin and Frieder Mayer: Proximity sensors reveal social information transfer in maternity colonies of Common noctule bats, in bioRxiv, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, 2018 (Ripperger2018, DOI, BibTeX)
• Niklas Duda, Thorsten Nowak, Markus Hartmann, Michael Schadhauser, Björn Cassens, Peter Wägemann, Muhammad Nabeel, Simon Ripperger, Sebastian Herbst, Klaus Meyer-Wegener, Frieder Mayer, Falko Dressler, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Rüdiger Kapitza, Jörg Robert, Jörn Thielecke and Robert and Kölpin, Alexander Weigel: BATS: Adaptive Ultra Low Power Sensor Network for Animal Tracking, in Sensors, Jg. 18, Nr. 10, 2018 (duda2018sensors, DOI, BibTeX)
• Björn Cassens, Simon Ripperger, Martin Hierold, Frieder Mayer and Rüdiger Kapitza: Automated Encounter Detection for Animal-Borne Sensor Nodes, in International conference on embedded wireless systems and networks, Uppsala, Sweden, 2017 (cassens2017ewsn, BibTeX)
• Björn Cassens, Arthur Martens and Rüdiger Kapitza: The Neverending Runtime: Using new Technologies for Ultra-Low Power Applications with an Unlimited Runtime, in International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, NextMote Workshop (EWSN 2016), EWSN '16, Graz, Austria, Seite 325-330, ACM, 2016 (cassens16ewsnNextMote, BibTeX)
• Falko Dressler, Margit Mutschlechner, Bijun Li, Rüdiger Kapitza, Simon Ripperger, Christopher Eibel, Benedict Herzog, Timo Hönig and Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat: Monitoring Bats in the Wild: On Using Erasure Codes for Energy-Efficient Wireless Sensor Networks, in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), Jg. 12, Nr. 1, Seite 7:1-7:29, ACM, 2016 (dressler2016monitoring, DOI, BibTeX)
• Christopher Eibel, Sebastian Herbst, Björn Cassens, Timo Hönig, Peter Wägemann, Heiko Janker, Rüdiger Kapitza, Klaus Meyer-Wegener and Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat: A Flexible, Adaptive System for Data-Stream Processing in Energy-Constrained Ad-hoc Networks, Technical reports / Department Informatik, Nr. CS-2015-04, Department Informatik, Seite 1–10, 2015 (EibelHerbstCassensetal.2015, BibTeX)
• Falko Dressler, Simon Ripperger, Martin Hierold, Thorsten Nowak, Christopher Eibel, Björn Cassens, Frieder Mayer, Klaus Meyer-Wegener and Alexander Koelpin: From Radio Telemetry to Ultra-Low Power Sensor Networks - Tracking Bats in the Wild, in IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE, 2015 (cassens15commag, BibTeX)
• Margit Mutschlechner, Bijun Li, Ruediger Kapitza and Falko Dressler: Using Erasure Codes to Overcome Reliability Issues in Energy-Constrained Sensor Networks, in 11th IEEE/IFIP Conference on Wireless On demand Network Systems and Services (WONS 2014), Obergurgl, Austria, IEEE, April 2014 (mutschlechner2014using, BibTeX)
• Bijun Li, Margit Mutschlechner, Ruediger Kapitza and Falko Dressler: Improving Transmission Reliability in Sensor Networks for Energy-Constrained Wildlife Monitoring, in 24th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), Diversity Workshop, Poster Session, Farmington, PA, ACM, November 2013 (li2013improving, BibTeX)
• Timo Hönig, Christopher Eibel, Wolfgang Schröder-Preikschat, Björn Cassens and Rüdiger Kapitza: Proactive Energy-Aware System Software Design with SEEP, in Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Energy Aware Software-Engineering and Development, Gesellschaft für Informatik, GI Softwaretechnik-Trends, Oldenburg, Germany, Seite 1-2, 2013 (hoenig2013proactive, BibTeX)

Studentische Arbeiten

Supporters

This research project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under grants no. FOR 1508 (subproject TP2).