Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments

Agricultural pest control traditionally relies on inefficient visual inspections. Acoustic monitoring offers a promising alternative by analyzing pest-specific sounds. While effective, implementing acoustic monitoring in agricultural settings faces practical constraints, particularly the limited com...

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Main Authors: Micheline Kazeneza, Anna Sergeevna Bosman, Destiny Kwabla Amenyedzi, Damien Hanyurwimfura, Emmanuel Ndashimye, Anthony Vodacek
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
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Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11039837/
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author Micheline Kazeneza
Anna Sergeevna Bosman
Destiny Kwabla Amenyedzi
Damien Hanyurwimfura
Emmanuel Ndashimye
Anthony Vodacek
author_facet Micheline Kazeneza
Anna Sergeevna Bosman
Destiny Kwabla Amenyedzi
Damien Hanyurwimfura
Emmanuel Ndashimye
Anthony Vodacek
author_sort Micheline Kazeneza
collection DOAJ
description Agricultural pest control traditionally relies on inefficient visual inspections. Acoustic monitoring offers a promising alternative by analyzing pest-specific sounds. While effective, implementing acoustic monitoring in agricultural settings faces practical constraints, particularly the limited computational resources available in remote farming environments. This necessitates optimized machine learning (ML) solutions for low-power edge devices. This study evaluates ML models for bird pest detection on resource-constrained platforms. We evaluated convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and traditional ML models by comparing standalone and knowledge-distilled versions of EfficientNetB0 and gated recurrent unity (GRU) against EfficientNetB4, Long short-term memory (LSTM), MobileNetV2, LightGBM, and support vector machine (SVM). Analysis revealed significant performance variations across computational requirements. LightGBM achieved 98% accuracy with minimal resources (8,500 parameters, 7KB, 0.6ms inference), demonstrating good efficiency. SVM (97% accuracy) and distilled GRU (86% accuracy) also showed favorable performance-to-resource ratios. Knowledge distillation substantially enhanced the accuracy of EfficientNetB0 (from 73% to 98%) and modestly improved GRU (from 84% to 86%). We examined platform compatibility across computing tiers, discovering that while high-performance edge devices (Jetson Nano, Raspberry Pi 4) support all studied models effectively, microcontrollers require specialized approaches. Advanced microcontrollers (such as ESP32-S3 and STM32H7) can accommodate optimized implementations, while highly constrained platforms (such as Arduino Nano) require TinyML techniques. This research contributes 1) an on-farm audio dataset, 2) comprehensive cross-model evaluation metrics, and 3) deployment optimization strategies for acoustic pest detection systems in resource-constrained agricultural environments.
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spelling doaj-art-3e971b5e9ff4431cb122e1b35a71be682025-08-20T03:23:57ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011310581310582710.1109/ACCESS.2025.358062011039837Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural EnvironmentsMicheline Kazeneza0https://orcid.org/0009-0002-2283-9184Anna Sergeevna Bosman1https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3546-1467Destiny Kwabla Amenyedzi2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3703-7312Damien Hanyurwimfura3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6290-1256Emmanuel Ndashimye4https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3549-8155Anthony Vodacek5https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9196-0928African Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things, University of Rwanda, Kigali, RwandaDepartment of Computer Science, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South AfricaAfrican Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things, University of Rwanda, Kigali, RwandaAfrican Centre of Excellence in Internet of Things, University of Rwanda, Kigali, RwandaSchool of ECE, Carnegie Mellon University Africa, Kigali, RwandaChester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, USAAgricultural pest control traditionally relies on inefficient visual inspections. Acoustic monitoring offers a promising alternative by analyzing pest-specific sounds. While effective, implementing acoustic monitoring in agricultural settings faces practical constraints, particularly the limited computational resources available in remote farming environments. This necessitates optimized machine learning (ML) solutions for low-power edge devices. This study evaluates ML models for bird pest detection on resource-constrained platforms. We evaluated convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and traditional ML models by comparing standalone and knowledge-distilled versions of EfficientNetB0 and gated recurrent unity (GRU) against EfficientNetB4, Long short-term memory (LSTM), MobileNetV2, LightGBM, and support vector machine (SVM). Analysis revealed significant performance variations across computational requirements. LightGBM achieved 98% accuracy with minimal resources (8,500 parameters, 7KB, 0.6ms inference), demonstrating good efficiency. SVM (97% accuracy) and distilled GRU (86% accuracy) also showed favorable performance-to-resource ratios. Knowledge distillation substantially enhanced the accuracy of EfficientNetB0 (from 73% to 98%) and modestly improved GRU (from 84% to 86%). We examined platform compatibility across computing tiers, discovering that while high-performance edge devices (Jetson Nano, Raspberry Pi 4) support all studied models effectively, microcontrollers require specialized approaches. Advanced microcontrollers (such as ESP32-S3 and STM32H7) can accommodate optimized implementations, while highly constrained platforms (such as Arduino Nano) require TinyML techniques. This research contributes 1) an on-farm audio dataset, 2) comprehensive cross-model evaluation metrics, and 3) deployment optimization strategies for acoustic pest detection systems in resource-constrained agricultural environments.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11039837/Acoustic monitoringbird pest detectiondeep learningknowledge distillationmachine learning
spellingShingle Micheline Kazeneza
Anna Sergeevna Bosman
Destiny Kwabla Amenyedzi
Damien Hanyurwimfura
Emmanuel Ndashimye
Anthony Vodacek
Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
IEEE Access
Acoustic monitoring
bird pest detection
deep learning
knowledge distillation
machine learning
title Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
title_full Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
title_fullStr Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
title_full_unstemmed Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
title_short Balancing Complexity and Performance of Machine Learning Models for Avian Pests Sound Detection in Agricultural Environments
title_sort balancing complexity and performance of machine learning models for avian pests sound detection in agricultural environments
topic Acoustic monitoring
bird pest detection
deep learning
knowledge distillation
machine learning
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11039837/
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