I have found the Driveway Patrol (sold on Amazon for $12 with free
shipping) works great to set up a perimeter alarms. Harbor Freight has a
similar unit for $15.
They have a fairly decent range and placing several units to cover
different directions is the way to go. I bought two that share the same
receiver, giving me a backup. The sensors run on 9V batteries which last
many months. The receiver can be run with a 4.5V plug in transformer or
3-C cells which will kick in if the power is cut.