Dynamic target tracking and observing in a mobile sensor network

This paper presents novel approaches to (1) the problem of flocking control of a mobile sensor network to track and observe a moving target and (2) the problem of sensor splitting/merging to track and observemultiple targets in a dynamic fashion. First, to deal with complex environments when themobile sensor network has to pass through a narrow space among obstacles, we propose an adaptive flocking control algorithm in which each sensor can cooperatively learn the network’s parameters to decide the network size in a decentralized fashion so that the connectivity, tracking performance and formation can be improved. Second, for multiple dynamic target tracking, a seed growing graph partition (SGGP) algorithm is proposed to solve the splitting/merging problem. To validate the adaptive flocking control we tested it and compared it with the regular flocking control algorithm. For multiple dynamic target tracking, to demonstrate the benefit of the SGGP algorithm in terms of total energy and time consumption when sensors split, we compared it with the random selection (RS) algorithm. Several experimental tests validate our theoretical results. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.