High-Precision UWB-Based Real-Time Locating System for Rodent Behavioral Studies in Naturalistic Habitats

Rodent has proven to be the premier model for behavioral studies. Rats and mice have been raised and maintained in conventional cage environment for investigations. In contrast, the enhanced naturalistic habitat has been demonstrated to be a better setting, especially when behaviors and social interactions are desired. The habitat enables rodents to perform all natural activities with intrinsic phenotypes and importantly, interactions among individuals. The important elements of behavioral studies related to animals is to have precise tracking and collect accurate signals of multiple animals during interactions. Most of the existing approaches use video tracking and thus often face difficulties as rodents are nocturnal and often stay in tunnels underground. Here, we employed the ultra wideband technology to establish a novel tracking method for both overground and underground circumstances. UWB model DWM1001C was used with a custom-made device worn by the animal. A simplified habitat with a size of four-by-two feet was designed to demonstrate the performance of the system. The study evaluated the positioning system accuracy errors below one centimeter for LoS and less than ten centimeters for the NLoS. Generally, this work provides a more accurate and proven experiment to localize the moving object in the indoor building with concrete structures and signal processing data and introduces novel advancement techniques to the use of UWB.