Development of an Ecologically Aware Communication Network for Elephant Tracking: The Case of Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem, Tanzania

Wildlife tracking in large protected areas is limited by scarce infrastructure and strict energy budgets, and network planning rarely accounts for animal ecology. This study presents an ecologically aware framework for planning a LoRaWAN network to track elephants in the Tarangire–Manyara Ecosystem (TME), Tanzania. The main contribution is to place infrastructure according to ecological suitability, using habitat, movement corridors, water availability, NDVI and terrain, rather than treating coverage as a purely geometric problem. Terrain, canopy height and vegetation are then used to model how radio signals propagate. NSGA-II selects gateway locations that best balance ecological coverage, signal performance and deployment cost, giving an architecture of eight gateways supported by relay and microwave-backhaul links. NS-3 simulations with 5, 10 and 20 collars gave average packet delivery ratios of 80.21%, 73.80% and 67.27%, with collar-to-gateway latency of about 0.9-1.1 s. Estimated collar battery life was 6.65-7.5 years, and the five-year total cost of ownership was about 28% lower than a satellite alternative (TZS 857.3 million versus 1,192.5 million). These results indicate that ecologically guided planning can deliver a low-power, cost-effective tracking network for remote conservation landscapes, subject to field validation