A 5μΑ wireless platform for cattle heat detection

Cattle heat (oestrus) detection has become an important problem to solve at dairy farms. Tracking the animal's physical activity is known to be a very effective way to check heat, sometimes requiring expensive electronics and large batteries for the task. In this work, several state of the art technologies are combined in an ultra low power platform with wireless long range communication, for activity data collection for oestrus detection. A modern micro-power accelerometer, FRAM-microcontroller, and a LoRa transceiver are utilized to develop the activity tracker. The device reaches a measured ultra low power consumption of 2 uA while collecting data, and a very large (> 10 km) communication distance using a star topology and LoRaWAN protocol at countryside areas.