Wireless energy transfer by means of inductive coupling for dairy cow health monitoring

The increase of herd sizes hinders the capability of the dairy farmer to timely detect illnesses. Therefore, automatic health monitoring systems are deployed, but due to their high energy consumption, the application possibilities remain limited. In this work, a wireless, inductive charging solution for dairy cow monitoring is designed. This system is mounted at the eating trough, and the amount of energy transferred each eating turn is determined experimentally. For the first time, inductive wireless power transfer is used to charge on-body sensor networks for cattle. Measurements at a research farm on 40 dairy cows show an average energy transfer of 96 J per meal, for an average eating time of 160 s. It is demonstrated that inductive power transfer is a viable technology to resolve the energy provision challenge for the automatic and real-time health monitoring of dairy cows.