The Design And Implementation Of The Satellite Grazing System

The Kubuqi Desert is located in the Inner Mongolia, and is the seventh largest desert in China. It is one of the regions which taking animal husbandry as the main mode of production in northern China. However, due to serious desertification and the scattered distribution of vegetation, local pastoralists still keep the tradition of the nomadic tribes of northern China—nomadic grazing. Until recent years, with the implementation of the desert ecological reconstruction and recovery policy, pastoralists gradually end their nomadic life. They begin to settle down and use modern means of transport to grazing. However, this change cannot really liberate the labor, still restricts the development of local animal husbandry. Using information technology to monitor the herds and to change the mode of production depends on labor, is the need of animal husbandry development in desert areas, and has important significance.This paper presents the concept of satellite grazing, and applies the satellite positioning technology to the desert gazing work. The Satellite grazing system is established in order to achieve informationize management of grazing work. With this system, pastoralists can know the herd's distribution through computers or mobile phones without going out for grazing. Satellite positioning technology has been applied to the field of animal husbandry for a long time, but it is mainly used for scientific experiments on animal behavior to guide the livestock ranch design. Using Satellite positioning technology to replace the actual grazing will face the special grazing environment and ways in the desert which puts forward a series of technical problems need to be overcome.The system is a software and hardware integration system which using satellite positioning technology, GIS and mobile communication technology as the core technology. It consists of GPS collars, servers, communication link, web grazing platform and mobile grazing platform. The system platform running on the Internet, has the function of herd location visual displaying, herd track querying, electronic fence and so on, can inform the pastoralist when herd left the virtual fences by system prompts or messages. The system also has the functions of intelligent power management and remote device configuration, allowing pastoralists make location collection plan according to demand.This paper first analyzes the problems faced by the application of satellite grazing technology in desert areas and gives the key technologies and functional requirements of the system. Then it describes the design of the system, including system structure and working process, data transfer protocol, system modular design and database design. Finally, the paper explains the selection of the system software platform, interface design and the implementation of major functions.After a number of laboratory and field tests, the System was put into production use in Kubuqi Desert in October2011. The successful application of Satellite grazing system in the desert area proves the feasibility of using satellite positioning technology in the desert pastoral areas. It is the beginning of satellite grazing and provides an effective means for intelligence grazing. As the development of the Internet of things, the system can further the introduction of wireless sensor and RFID technology, and integrates the environmental monitoring data and the flow of husbandry products data. This can promote the whole informationization of animal husbandry.