The Antenna Coverage Location Problem in the context of cattle tracking in the Austrian Alps

Alpine regions are cultural landscapes with a high level of biodiversity. They are used for multiple purposes, such as tourism, and recreation but are also home to grazing livestock over the summer. The usage of alpine regions by different user groups often results in conflicts of interest — especially between agriculture and tourism. To resolve this conflict real-time monitoring of the grazing livestock can be helpful. The start-up ViehFinder has developed a solution for cattle tracking based on Long Range Wide Area Networks. The objective of the paper is to develop a Maximal Covering Location Problem – i.e. an Antenna Location Covering Model – to optimize the locations of base stations in Alpine regions. This paper defines constraints for the demand and candidate sites that need to be considered in the context of antenna placement in the Austrian alps. In the paper, a spatial processing workflow is presented that uses a GIS-based site selection approach, resampling as a site reduction technique, and viewshed analysis for generating the service areas of the antennas. The authors go on to present an Integer Linear Program (ILP) for solving the Antenna Coverage Location Problem. The spatial optimization methodology and spatial data processing are applied to two test areas in the Austrian Alps. In addition, the paper analyzes the behavior and computational complexity of the algorithm with varying problem instances and evaluates the bottlenecks thoroughly. The results show the boundaries of ILP for spatial optimization. Further, we show the suitability of the proposed solution in the context of cattle tracking in the Austrian alps.