Design on the monitoring system of physical characteristics of dairy cattle based on zigbee technology

One of the difficult problems in dairy farming is detection of cows' estrus, whose technology has been developed in some countries; however it is still in the developing stage in China. This paper presents a new method which resorts to collecting cattle's body temperature and behavior characteristics for detecting the cow's estrus. According to the body temperature of dairy cattle rising 1-2° in ovulation period, and the volume of the movements of dairy cattle increasing significantly, the paper described a monitoring system which is based on Zigbee wireless transmission technology and the system can detect the body temperature and the volume of the movements of dairy cattle at the same time. The system consists of a wireless transceiver and controller module MG2455, a thermopile infrared sensor and a digital acceleration sensor ADXL20. The system uses a star topology and each signal acquisition node controlled by MG2455 is fixed in the thigh of dairy cattle. The system can determine the identity of dairy cattle for the uniqueness of the transmission address of MG2455. The signal acquisition nodes send the real-time data acquired by the infrared sensor and acceleration sensor and packaged by Zigbee protocol stack to the Full-function device (FFD) within the cluster and then the FFD transfers the real-time data to the client station through the USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface for further professing. The use of the system not only can make the monitoring of cows' estrus more accurate and reduce the labor burden, but also can help the managers to improve the level of management and can enhance the economic benefits of dairy farming.