# SpaceSheep: Satellite Communications for Ovine Smart Grazing
## 5 Conclusions  
In addition to grazing in the vineyard, animal conditioning mechanisms have been used with other species, such as olive groves, orchards, and even blueberry plantations. Likewise, its application capabilities can go beyond animal conditioning, with wearablesensing devices allowing the monitoring of feeding, time of ingestion accounting, the studying of the energy expended by animal activities, deliveries, and even night activity and wellbeing. In most of these locations, where such activities are common, Internet access is limited, as was the case at Quinta da Ervamoira. Nonetheless, electronic systems still depend on the action of the human operator in certain situations, such as when the equipment fails or when the well-being of the animal is at stake.  
The present work allowed for the implementation of a monitoring system for animal devices, which is able to send an alarm that helps to protect the vineyards and animals. SheepIT gateway was integrated with a satellite interface, allowing it to operate even in places without the Internet, such as areas near the Douro River region in Portugal. In addition to integration with a satellite communications system, the present work included the evaluation of several information-encoding APIs to optimize the sending of information related to the alarms, and the replacement of the JSON API, which was initially used by the MessagePack API.  
The monitoring system was functionally validated and the communication latency was evaluated, while the volume of the signaling produced during its operation was measured by different encoding APIs. The signaling measurements revealed that MessagePack performed better. Moreover, the results showed that the performance values were perfectly acceptable and compatible with the system's alarm function.  
Additionally, the analysis of the computational requirements necessary for the implementation of the gateway showed that for small/medium-sized herds, it is possible to maintain a gateway based on a Raspberry Pi, yet for larger-sized herds, it will be necessary to improve the computational capacity of the hardware that implements the gateway.  
In any future work, the set of alarms being transmitted via satellites should be minimized, as well as any alternatives for sending more efficient messages. A LoRaWAN-satellite integrated environment should be considered, which is supported by an AI-assisted opportunistic transmission approach that can allow timely alarm transmissions, and opportunistically transmit low-cost monitoring data for behavior analyses through data mining techniques.  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] were responsible for the conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, formal analysis, investigation, resources, data curation, writing--original draft preparation, writing--review and editing, visualization, supervision, project administration, and funding acquisition. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
This work is funded by FCT/MCTES through national funds and when applicable co-funded EU funds under the project UIDB/50008/2020-UIDP/50008/2020.  
Not applicable.  
We would like to express as well our thanks to EchoStar Mobile ([[https://www.echostarmobile.com/](https://www.echostarmobile.com/)]([https://www.echostarmobile.com/](https://www.echostarmobile.com/))) for allowing us access to their satellite terminal and mobile satellite data services.  
The authors declare no conflict of interest.