Improving the Spatial Accuracy of Wildlife Tracking Data with Automated Radio Telemetry Systems

Automated Radio Telemetry Systems (ARTS) consisting of animal-borne radio transmitters and networks of fixed radio receivers are frequently used to continuously track wildlife movements over time. The low weight of available radio transmitters and the ability of these systems to collect data with high temporal resolution makes ARTS an attractive alternative to other wildlife tracking technologies. However, the research questions that can be addressed with ARTS are often limited by the spatial accuracy of location data produced by the system. One of the primary methods used to produce location estimates with ARTS involves the comparison of the Received Signal Strength (RSS) of a radio transmission detected in multiple receivers of a network. The accuracy of the resulting locations is highly dependent on the algorithm used to process the raw RSS data generated by the ARTS into location estimates. In this work we have developed a new algorithm, the Inductive Grid Search method, and shown that it is capable of producing more accurate location estimates than other commonly used methods such as multilateration. The improvement in spatial accuracy realized through the use of this new algorithm enables the design of wildlife tracking studies utilizing ARTS to address research questions that were previously inaccessible.