IDBR: Universal Base-Station for Wildlife Radio-Tracking and Telemetry

过去 3 年来，具有无线电功能的跟踪标签极大地增强了我们对野生动物行为的了解，并且正在开发新型标签，这些标签可以捕获和传输更多有关野生动物行为的信息。微电子技术的进步还缩小了标签的尺寸并延长了其使用寿命，从而增加了可标记的物种数量。 不幸的是，这些不同的标签使用各种各样的频率、编码方案和通信协议，每个新标签都需要一个全新的基站。这使得新的部署更加昂贵，不允许在重叠研究之间共享监测站，并且要求现场生物学家为使用的每种标签类型携带一个基站。该项目的目标是为行为生态学家和其他人开发一种通用无线电收发器，可以轻松配置为与任何现有的野生动物跟踪标签以及可预见的未来设计进行通信。我们的方法基于软件定义的无线电，其中无线电的大部分参数都是在软件中配置的，允许单个硬件覆盖多种类型的标签。 在这个项目中，我们将开发能够覆盖至少 3 个不同的现有鸟类标签的工作原型，并展示它们在现场的工作情况。 我们还将开发一种可以捕获信号但不能解码信号的模式，让不同研究人员的标签信号可以被同一个物理基站捕获，然后分发给各个研究人员进行解码。 最后，我们将确保最终输出的格式允许将捕获的信号顺利上传到 MOVEBANK 等数据库。为了确保我们的“通用基站”可供其他研究人员使用，我们将在互联网上发布我们开发的所有电路板设计、零件清单和软件，以及所有设计和软件的文档。 我们的目虽然这项工作将为专业和业余生物学家提供宝贵的工具，但它也将为工程学生提供宝贵的教育经验，并且所需的大部分设计工作将由本科生和工程硕士学生完成，作为毕业所需的设计项目，因为该项目需要团队合作，有具体的目标和规格，并且有明确的最终客户（正在合作该项目的现场生物学家），因此该项目将为学生提供宝贵的经验。计划在工业界工作。有关更多详细信息，请参阅：http://molnargroup.ece.cornell.edu/research.html

Radio-enabled tracking tags have dramatically enhanced our knowledge of wildlife behavior over the last 3 decades, and new types of tags are being developed which capture and transmit dramatically more information about their behavior. Advances in microelectronics have also reduced the size and increased the lifetime of tags, increasing the number of species that can be tagged. Unfortunately these various tags use a wide variety of frequencies, coding schemes, and communication protocols, requiring an entirely new base station for each new tag. This makes new deployments more expensive, disallows sharing of monitoring stations between overlapping studies, and requires that that biologists in the field carry a base station for every tag type in use.The goal of this project is to develop a general-purpose radio transceiver for behavioral ecologists and others that can be easily configured to communicate with any existing wildlife tracking tag, as well as with foreseeable future designs. Our approach is based on software defined radios, where most of the parameters of the radio are configured in software, allowing a single piece of hardware to cover multiple types of tags. In this project we will develop working prototypes able to cover at least 3 different existing avian tags, and show them working in the field. We will also develop a mode where signals can be captured, but not decoded, to allow tag signals from different researchers to be captured by the same physical basestation, and then distributed to the various researchers to be decoded. Finally, we will ensure that the resulting outputs are in a format that allows smooth upload of captured signals to databases such as MOVEBANK.To ensure that our 'universal base stations' are available to other researchers, we will post on the internet all board designs, parts lists and software we develop, as well as documentation of all designs and software. Our goal is that UBS designs be accessible not only to researchers, but also to amateur birders and other 'citizen scientists', allowing them to contribute to research, as well as enhancing their birding experience (or example, by allowing them, after detecting a tagged bird, to look up 'their bird' in a database and learn more about it's particular behavior and movement. To further this goal, we will attempt to develop a smart-phone interface to our UBS, to allow birders in the field to capture and upload data from tags they encounter via their phones. While this work will provide a valuable tool for biologists, both professional and amateur, it will also provide valuable educational experience for engineering students. Parts of this project will be incorporated into class projects, and much of the design work required will be completed by undergraduate and Masters of Engineering students completing as design projects required for graduation. Because this project requires teamwork, has specific concrete goals and specifications, and clear end-customers (field biologist who are collaborating on this project), this project will provide invaluable experience in preparing students planning on working in industry.For more details, see: http://molnargroup.ece.cornell.edu/research.html