Connected Cow Systems: An Electrical Design Perspective

Image Source: EFA/stock.adobe.com; generated with AI

By Traci Browne for Mouser Electronics

Published July 25, 2025

How might you approach your next embedded design project for a device that must survive being stomped on, soaked, and even digested daily? That’s the reality for engineers working on “connected cow” systems, where both external and internal sensors are transforming livestock into living data hubs.

Traditional dairy farming entails a variety of challenges. Farmers spend many hours manually checking for sick or stressed animals. This process is not only slow but increasingly unsustainable due to labor shortages and rising costs. Add common issues like overcrowded barns, intermittent water access, and inefficient feeding, and it becomes clear why old-fashioned ways of keeping herds healthy and productive are becoming more difficult by the year.

This is where electrical design engineers come in. The concept of connected cows presents an opportunity to reinvent the backbone of agriculture. This article will explore how the Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing dairy and livestock farming, the unique hurdles engineers face, and how innovative design is making both cows and farmers more efficient.

IoT System Architecture in Livestock Farming

Unlike monitoring a single person with a fitness tracker, engineering an IoT system for livestock involves instrumenting an entire herd, each equipped with its own suite of ruggedized sensors. These devices go beyond metrics like tracking steps or heart rate; they continuously collect a diverse range of physiological data, including temperature, rumination, activity levels, and even reproductive cycles, along with environmental metrics such as humidity, air quality, and pasture conditions.

The challenge extends far beyond capturing a snapshot in time for a single animal. The breakthrough is the ability to gather, transmit, and aggregate streams of data over months, not just moments, so that farmers can spot subtle health issues or emerging trends across the entire herd. That calls for a robust, scalable, and power-efficient IoT system that turns raw data into actionable insights without draining batteries or clogging the network.

Multilayer Network Design in the Barn

The three-tiered edge–fog–cloud network topology (Table 1) is a technical preference and an example of a practical response to the demands of modern dairy farming. Farmers need timely, actionable insights, which requires a system that can collect and process vast amounts of data in real time, flagging health issues or unusual behavior before they become significant problems. By spreading intelligence across edge, fog, and cloud layers, systems can generate and act on critical alerts locally, while long-term trends and analytics are handled in the cloud. This approach helps farmers make faster, better decisions, and that is something a single-layer system can’t deliver.

Table 1. Multilayer network design in the barn

Communication Protocols for Farm Environments

Choosing the proper method for devices to talk to each other is crucial. Farm IoT systems must send data reliably across wide-open pastures, through thick barn walls, and in areas with uneven cell coverage—all while minimizing battery drain. The chosen protocol (Table 2) affects everything from how quickly alerts reach the farmer to how often devices need maintenance. Sometimes, long-range, low-power links for pasture monitoring are required; other times, short-range, high-bandwidth connections are best for inside the barn. The key is to match the technology to the job.

Table 2. Communication protocols for farm environments

Power Management Strategies for Wearable Sensors

Power management is arguably the most critical design challenge in livestock IoT, and farmers keenly feel its importance. Engineers must weigh battery types, energy harvesting, and low-power protocols (Table 3). Unlike consumer wearables, which can be recharged daily, cow sensors are expected to run for years without changing the battery. A dead device doesn’t just mean lost data; it means missed health alerts, more labor, and less trust in the technology. The goal is a true “set-and-forget” operation, which means squeezing every drop of efficiency out of hardware, firmware, and communication intervals, and even exploring energy harvesting.

Table 3. Power management strategies for wearable sensors

Data Analytics and AI

All the sensor readings are insignificant unless they can be analyzed. That’s where data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) step in. At the edge, low-power microcontrollers filter out noise, compress data, and flag urgent issues right away, saving bandwidth and battery. More advanced analyses, such as disease prediction or trend spotting, occur in the cloud using machine learning (ML). The engineering challenge is building hardware and networks that process and transmit data efficiently and securely, tying everything together with farm management platforms for a seamless flow of information from barnyard to dashboard.

Key Design Challenges for Livestock IoT

Designing wearables for livestock is about more than devising clever circuits. The physical realities of the farm environment demand ultra-low-power design, robust communication, and materials that can handle mud, dust, moisture, and daily abuse. Devices often need to run for years on a single battery, so balancing battery size, features, and maintenance intervals is critical, especially for sensors in remote spots.

Another concern is scalability. Farms may need thousands of sensors spread over vast areas, so the network must handle high device density and long-range connectivity without exceeding the power budget or creating additional maintenance challenges.

The system’s environmental resilience is non-negotiable. Because sensors must survive all manner of contaminants and grime in the barnyard, designers need to make smart material choices, use tough enclosures, and employ sensor hardening techniques.

Additionally, designers should pay attention to security and privacy. From secure boot processes to encrypted data to anonymized records, these protections are critical for farm operations, maintaining trust and safeguarding animal welfare.^[1] New sensors must integrate seamlessly with existing farm management and veterinary systems and often must support multiple protocols and data formats.

Cost is always a design consideration. Engineers must weigh the initial investment in hardware and infrastructure against the long-term value, like improved efficiency, early health insights, and fewer losses. The ideal solution needs to be tough enough for real farm conditions, flexible enough to scale, and affordable for large and small operations.

Rumen Bolus Sensors: Engineering in the Belly of the Beast

To truly understand the complexity of these challenges, consider the case of rumen bolus sensors.^[2] These devices are designed to live inside a cow’s stomach (i.e., rumen), sometimes for years. Unlike wearables, these ingestible devices must survive a harsh, acidic environment while reliably measuring temperature, movement, rumination, water intake, and even heart rate.

The form factor is a balancing act: The sensor must be big enough for a battery and electronics, but small and smooth enough to be swallowed and stay in place. Most of these sensors use non-rechargeable lithium batteries (such as D-type lithium-thionyl chloride cells) for their high energy density, reliable voltage, and lifecycle of up to six years. Researchers have tried using rechargeable batteries and energy harvesting techniques (e.g., thermoelectric, kinetic), but recharging inside a cow isn’t exactly practical, and power yields are typically too low.^[3] Some researchers are even exploring microbial fuel cells powered by rumen bacteria, but issues such as electrode corrosion and low output are challenging to overcome.^[4]

Enclosure design is another hurdle. The enclosure must be food-safe, acid-resistant (think polyoxymethylene or special resins), and hermetically sealed to keep digestive fluids out.^[5]

Communication is another factor, since animal tissue weakens radio signals. Solutions like low-frequency, long-range protocols (such as LoRaWAN) and strategically placed gateways help get data from the cow to the cloud.

Rumen bolus sensors demonstrate the various challenges engineers encounter in this field, such as integrating advanced battery technology, materials science, and wireless communication.

Future Trends in Connected Livestock

Advances in sensor miniaturization and battery chemistry will mean longer-lasting, less intrusive devices. Edge AI will enable more analytics to occur directly on the animal. Energy harvesting, such as kinetic and thermal energy, could eventually make sensors self-sustaining, further reducing maintenance costs. The rise of digital twins, where real-time data feeds virtual models of animals and herds, could transform predictive management and planning.^[6]

These technological advancements are not solely for dairy cows. They are set to spread across beef, poultry, swine, and beyond, tying into broader agricultural supply chains for end-to-end traceability and sustainability. For electrical design engineers, the connected cow offers more than a technical challenge; it represents innovation that could transform an entire industry.

Sources

[1]https://agribusiness.purdue.edu/2025/02/20/why-cybersecurity-must-be-a-top-priority-for-agribusiness-in-2025/
[2]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11545371/
[3]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11548120/
[4]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37112502/
[5]https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/21/6976
[6]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40319358/