Cornell Lab of Ornithology Royal NIOZ

TDOA Tracking

Description

An advanced radio tag system for tracking wildlife in real time was developed at Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithica, USA. Close collaboration with Royal NIOZ developed the system further for a large scale implementation to track Red Knot birds on the Dutch Waddden Sea during 2011. Geo-location was achieved by advanced TDOA (Time Difference Of Arrival) techniques. This succeeded in spatially tracking 50 tags simultaneously over an area exceeding 100SqKm at a rate of 1Hz per tag.

Responsibilities

  • Work in collaboration with Cornell Lab of Ornithology USA and Marine Ecology at Royal NIOZ to realize a 3 month field study of 50 tagged birds on the Dutch Wadden Sea.
  • Optimize miniature radio tags for harsh ocean environment.
  • Production of over 100 tag units.
  • Design and implement 10 towers to form a tracking network at sea.
  • Integrate many components on each tower including RF parts, DSP boards, Linux computers, power management, and GPRS modems.
  • Implement GPRS backhaul of data from each tower to a server at Royal NIOZ on Texel, where a database was successfully populated with near real time data describing the geo-location of each tag.
  • Harvest and manage wind energy to achieve power autonomy.
  • Collaborate on a technical strategy for extending the study into 2012 and beyond.

Resource Links

Small TDOA radio tags for geolocating birds in near-real time (mm scale)

Tag reciever unit including RF components, DSP board, Linux computer, Power Management, and GPRS backhaul

Here we see 7 of the 10 reciever units that were constructed.

Servicing 1 of the 10 reciever towers in the network. Each tower was operated remotely via GPRS and used wind for energy.

A network of 10 reciever stations was deployed on mudflats in the Dutch Wadden Sea. Data from each tower was transported to a server located at Royal NIOZ on the island of Texel some 30Km away. The position of each tag could then be calculated and monitored in near real-time.

Example track of a tagged Red Knot bird over a 24 hour period. The purple dots are reciever station locations.