Precision Bird Tracking by Means of Miniaturized GPS Technology

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the measurement of dynamic soaring trajectories of albatrosses. First, a short description of the dynamic soaring technique is given and some important aspects of measuring the trajectories in wind are discussed. Hereupon GPS is shown to be a suitable instrument for the task at hand and results achieved in the past using this technology are presented. Next the concept of an integrated GPS bird logging unit based on a low cost single frequency GPS module is given. As the online position accuracy of the receiver is not sufficient in the scope of this project, software solutions for postprocessing the acquired data are needed. A professional phase-based postprocessing package is addressed and several tests assessing the quality and the availability of the resulting GPS trajectories are described. Finally, an alternative software approach for solving the actual problem is presented.