In this paper, we describe an automatic peoplecounting and environment monitoring system based on a wireless sensor network at a mountain area. Several people-counting systems and monitoring systems have been proposed separately. However, these systems are not suitable to a place such as the mountain area because of a few problems. In this paper, we develop a system which can count the number of visiting people and sense environment information to protect an ecosystem of the mountain area. For people-counting in the mountain area, our system uses two photo-beam sensors, a big rechargeable power and a solar power. Our people-counting method is automatically to count the number of incoming and outgoing people at a special point in real time.

Moreover, the environment sensors measure environment information at the mountain area, and constitute the wireless sensor network with photobeam sensors. To establish this system in Korea Mountains, we enforced tests on the wireless communications range and the reliability of peoplecounting. By the testing results, we found that the developed system is suitable within 200 meters for effective wireless communications in Korea Mountains. When the width of a path up a mountain is within 1.5m, the reliability of people-counting in our system is over 90%.