Secure and scalable dataprocessing and communications for an Animal Tracking System

Abstract

Modern technology is constantly being employed in new fields, by new industries and people. The cost of advanced technological equipment decreases continously, and equipment that was reserved for people and corporations with a lot of money has now become household products. This enables many interesting ideas and projects, Kitron Development’s radiocollar project being one of them. Kitron Development is involved in a project to track the position of animals by substituting the traditional bell collar with a collar that contains a GPS receiver. The collar transmits its position to a base station using VHF radio, and the base station forwards the received data to a central using cellular technology. In this thesis we have surveyed, designed and implemented the central, called Animal Tracking System, that receives and processes data from the base stations. The Animal Tracking System consists of four different components that work together. A server that communicates with the base station, and stores data in a database, an alarm monitor that survey the data in the database and a web application that allow the farmers to view data about their animals, as well as configure the system.