Collaborative Sensor Signal Processing for Target Detection, Localization, and Tracking

Wireless ad hoc sensor network is an emerging information technology that promises great potential for both military and civilian applications. Such a network can be used to monitor environment, detect, classify, and locate objects and then track them over a specified region. The sensor network is expected to deploy varying number of sensor nodes that can sense the environment using different modalities such as acoustic, seismic, and infrared. The sensors also have the capabilities to communicate and interact with neighboring sensors via wireless channels as well as process the information. It is expected that these components can be integrated into a tightly packaged, low cost sensor nodes, ready for massive deployment. For military applications these low-cost, integrated wireless sensor nodes can be rapidly deployed by air over remote regions to monitor vehicles and personnel movements, and to relay the findings back to the command center on a real-time basis.