Seminar on February 4, 2020
Title
Animal Monitoring by Wireless Sensor Network with Experiments in Galapagos (Ecuador).
Speakers
Dr. Pierpaolo Loreti, Dr. Lorenzo Bracciale, Dr. Gabriele Gentile, University of Rome Tor Vergata
When and Where
February 4, 2020, 15:00-17:00
Engineering Teaching Building, room B15
Abstract
The design of wireless sensor nodes for animal tracking is a multidisciplinary activity that presents several research challenges from both technical and biological point of views. A monitoring device has to be designed accounting for all system requirements including the specific characteristics of animals and environment. In this talk we present some aspects of the design of the wireless sensor node to track and monitor the pink iguana: a recently discovered species living in remote locations at the Galapagos Islands. The few individuals of this species live in a relatively small area that lacks of any available communication infrastructure. We present and discuss the energy harvesting architecture and the related energy management logic. We also discuss the impact of packaging on the sensor performance and the consequences of the limited available energy on the GPS tracking. We also present the new results coming from 20 devices installed on wild pink and yellow Iguanas in September 2019 and whose operation is planned for one year.
Speakers’ Short Bios
Pierpaolo Loreti is Researcher in Telecommunications at the University of Roma Tor Vergata. Since 2006 he has been a Researcher of the Dep. of Electronic Engineering and an Adjunct Professor at the Internet Engineering Course at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. Since 1998 he has worked on several European and national projects performing research and coordination activities. His research activity spans different topics in the areas of wireless and mobile networks, IoT systems and platforms, framework design, analytic modelling, performance evaluation through simulation and test-bedding.
Lorenzo Bracciale, Ph.D. is a Researcher at the University of Tor Vergata since June 2013 in the Department of Electronic Engineering where he currently teaches “Computer Science Fundamentals”. He published his works on more than 22 international peer-reviewed conferences, 6 journals, and wrote three book chapters. He served as a reviewer on many conferences and journals, among which “Transactions on wireless communications” and “Transaction on Networking”. His current research interests are in the field of IoT systems and data privacy.
Gabriele Gentile received his Ph.D. degree “with distinction” in evolutionary biology in 1994. From 1998 to 2003, he was at the Osborn Memorial Laboratory of Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Since 2003, he is based at the Department of Biology, University Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy. He is Member of IUCN, Iguana Specialist Group, and a Council Member of the Italian Society for Evolutionary Biology. He is interested in molecular phylogeny and phylogeography, molecular evolution, population genetics, conservation genetics, ecology and evolution of underground communities, and island biogeography. Since 2003, he has been the head of an international and multidisciplinary project for the study of the evolution and conservation of land iguanas in Galapagos Islands (Ecuador) in partnership with the Galápagos National Park and in collaboration with several Italian and foreign institutions.