Data transmission

Scientists who observe animals using transmitters have high telephone bills. The reason: to date, the transmitters have been transmitting their measurements as SMS messages via the GSM mobile radio standard. Mobile tariffs, which also include roaming in Africa, are expensive but cannot be avoided if researchers want to track animals such as fruit bats, storks and cuckoos in Africa.

With Icarus, data transmission costs will at least be less expensive in the future. This is because the new Icarus transmitters will no longer be sending their measurements via the mobile network but to a separate receiver station on board of a satellit. A data packet is approximately 220 bytes in size and will be transmitted in three and a half seconds. The data will be coded using the so-called CDMA method. With this technology, several data streams can be transmitted simultaneously in a common frequency range. The mini-transmitters not only forward their sensor data, they can also store several gigabytes of data. To be able to read out this data, the transmitter must be collected again. 

Travelling in a vertical direction, the data packets reach the receiver station. In a horizontal direction, in contrast, the data packets are not only weakened by the atmosphere but are also absorbed by the vegetation and the landscape. This means that the signals from the transmitters can only be captured on Earth over short distances and also only within the transmission window that lasts a few seconds. The data is therefore transmitted in unencrypted form although a simple encryption is technically possible.

To ensure that the transmitters do not expend their limited energy reserves unnecessarily, data transmission to the satellite takes place in narrow time windows, namely only when the station flies over the transmitter. The transmitters calculate these times independently from the satellite orbital data that are transmitted to them regularly. After that, the transmitter goes into sleep mode and wakes up again at the predetermined times.

At the determined time, it awakens again and transmits its data to the receiver station out in space. It is also possible in the opposite way, however, to adjust the configuration of the transmitter at the request of the scientist. Each transmitter generally transmits its data once a day into space. The receiver stores the data and transmits it at the next radio contact with the ground station. The control centre forwards the data to the Icarus user data centre where the data is processed and made available to scientists in the Movebank database. As a result, more than 24 hours can pass between measurement and publication in Movebank.