The recent advancements of technology in robotics and wireless communication have enabled the low-cost and large-scale deployment of mobile sensor nodes for target tracking which is a critical application scenario of wireless sensor networks. Due to the constraints of limited sensing range, it is of great importance to design node coordination mechanism for reliable tracking so that at least the target can always be detected with a high probability while the total network energy cost can be reduced for longer network lifetime. In this paper, we deal with this problem considering both the unreliable wireless channel and the network energy constraint. We transfer the original problem into a dynamic coverage problem, and decompose it into two subproblems. By exploiting the online estimate of target location, we first decide the locations where the mobile nodes should move into so that the reliable tracking can be guaranteed. Then, we assign different nodes to each location in order that the total energy cost in terms of moving distance can be minimized. Extensive simulations under various system settings are employed to evaluate the effectiveness of our solution.
Abstract-As technology advancements in robotics and wireless communication, tracking mobile targets using mobile sensors has aroused widespread concern in recent years. In this paper, we propose a novel coordinative moving strategy for autonomous mobile sensor networks to guarantee the target can be detected in each observed step while minimizing the amount of moving sensors. The proposed scheme consists of obtaining the current position of the target, which is then used to predict the next time-step location of the target. Once the uncertainty region of the target's position is defined, the proposed method allows the mobile sensors to cover it in an optimal way. Therefore, we can assign each mobile sensor to an optimal location to cover the uncertainty region while minimizing the total traveled distance of sensors. Extensive simulations are given to evaluated performance and demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed strategy.
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