Harmonic Radar Systems for Insect Tracking

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*** Insect tracking through the use of harmonic radar is a challenging engineering problem yielding previously unavailable behavioral information from insects. The urgency in understanding insects is driven by the need for greater food production while at the same time coping with invasive species enabled by climate change. Colony collapse disorder in honeybees is one very familiar crisis driving this work. Canada will benefit from tracking of the corn rootworm, Colorado potato beetle, and honeybee by protecting our agriculture industry while at the same time producing highly skilled radio engineers. Radio tracking of mammals and birds is commonplace providing a wealth of information on their movements. Insects are generally not capable of carrying conventional radio transmitters and thus an alternative tracking means is required. This is where harmonic radar plays an important role by moving the complexity and mass of the radio system to the human operator end leaving the simplest and lowest mass radio tag at the other, insect, end. *** The first of three main objectives is to achieve insect tags of lower than the current 3 mg mass in order that new and smaller insect species can be tracked. The second is to develop a much lower mass base unit that can be flown on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The third objective is to continue engaging students in the design and development of high performance radio and related technologies for use in important ecological applications. We now fabricate 3 mg tags which are mainly composed of the copper coated steel wire used for the antenna and inductor. Tracking a 2 mg mosquito for example would require a 60 fold reduction in tag mass. There is no practical lower limit to the tag size as one can always find smaller insects needing tracking. The second objective results from numerous requests I have received for development of a system to track honeybees in particular. Collaboration with an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) expert will lead to a harmonic radar system that can either scan a region from the air to locate an insect or follow an insect once identified. *** Finally the student's hardware and/or software project is implemented for physical testing in an operating radar system in order that they gain the very practical skills of development along with other skills such as coordinating work with others, sharing facilities and helping each other. Harmonic radar is attractive to students from the humanity perspective in that it allows them to learn and use highly technical electrical engineering skills while applying them to worldwide ecological problems. We have been building harmonic radar systems since 1999; the research has involved 17 engineering students over that time, and the systems are deployed in five countries.********