# Research and Development of Automatic Monitoring System for Livestock Farms
## 1 Introduction  
Nowadays since the birth rate of Taiwan keeps on declining and the population aging rate keeps on increasing, the labor force is gradually shrinking consequently. The working population has been coming down year by year from its peak in 2015, and it is estimated that in 2065 it will shrink to around 50.38% of what in 2018 [1]. Issues of lack of labor population have been found in traditional industries, especially in agriculture and livestock farming which require large amounts of labors. As young adults no longer intend to stay in the rural areas that make the work force shortage issues even more serious, and that results in challenges for the development of agriculture and livestock farming in Taiwan. In order to sustain these industries, automation and smart agriculture are surely the key solutions for resolution. Wireless communication exhibits the features of \"hassle-free\" and \"high mobility\". Therefore, wiring pre-configuration and installation are not required and construction time and cost can be saved. It is also a maintenance-effective system that shows less problems from rat and insect bites, and the network architecture can be quickly re-configured without rewiring. The development of wireless communication technology contributes to the applications in a range of fields such as everyday life, agriculture [2; 3; 4], livestock farming, traditional industries, vehicle [5], transportation [6], medical care [7], and military defense. It makes hard things easy and thus reduce time consumptionand improve the operational efficiency. The wireless communication technologies are prospectively applied on various industrial fields with explosive marketing potentials. The IEEE 802 standards specify the rules of data access control, comprising data transmission and data retrieving across network. The most commonly used wireless communication technologies include Bluetooth, ANT, wireless mobile communication, infrared, ultra-wide band, wireless broadband, Wi-Fi, WiMax (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) broadband technology, ZigBee and LPWAN (Low-Power Wide-Area Network) LoRa, Sigfox and NB-IoT technologies. Each communication technology has its own characteristics and areas suitable for its application. Traditional detecting approaches for the environmental conditions of livestock farms require manual management to take the sampling records from the livestock farms and control the switches such as fans and water spray valves by general timers or time-consuming manual controls. However, such traditional practices may result in problems as seasonal and weather changes happen. Moreover, manual controls will take extra man-hours. With the growth and development of industrial automation and wireless communication technology, applications of the automatic monitoring and control on the livestock farming and agriculture have become much more comprehensive and versatile. We may refer to the articles [8; 9; 10; 11] for the environmental monitoring platform designs of wireless sensing networks (WSNs). Concerning Smart Agricultural System, [PERSON] et al. [12] have established a complete wireless system with multimedia-sensing network. [PERSON] et al. [13] have used LabVIEW graphical program to construct a plant monitoring system which can instantly track the environmental changes around crops. [PERSON] et al. have combined programmable logic controller (PLC) and Internet of Things to establish a multi-platform cloud environment control system [14], so that people could access and monitor the environmental data through mobile phones. [PERSON] et al. [15] have designed an agricultural-purpose wireless sensing network system to detect environmental parameters of the farms. Wireless transmission technology has also been widely used in livestock farming. [PERSON] et al. [16] have applied Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology on the research of the production and management of dairy farms to improve the management efficiency of dairy cows. [PERSON] et al.