A scoping study to assess the precision of an automated radiolocation animal tracking system

摘要

The spatial precision of a new automated radiolocation animal tracking system (ARATS) was studied in a small-scale (similar to 5 ha) trial site. Twelve static tags, in a four by three grid, transmitted for 28 days. The 12 tags recorded 36,452 transmissions with a mean transmission per tag of 3037. Each transmission included the tag number, date and time and the calculated longitude and latitude. The mean location and then the Euclidean distance from the mean location for each tag were calculated in order to derive location precision per tag. The overall precision for the 12 tags was +/- 22 m with a SD of 49 m with the most and least precise tags having precisions of +/- 8 m and +/- 51 m, respectively. As with other geolocation technologies, it would appear that structures in the environment cause signal propagation effects including multipath and non-line-of-sight, which result in errors in the derived locations.