An Energy Efficient Tracking Method in Wireless Sensor Networks

Since it is difficult to replace batteries of the sensor nodes that are once deployed in the field, energy saving is one of the most critical issues for object tracking in wireless sensor networks. It is desirable that only the nodes surrounding the mobile target should be responsible for observing the target to save the energy consumption and extend the network lifetime as well by reducing the number of participating nodes. The number of nodes participating in object tracking can be reduced by an accurate estimation of the target location. In this paper, we propose a tracking method that can reduce the number of participating sensor nodes for target tracking. We show that our tracking method performs well in terms of energy saving regardless of mobility pattern of the mobile target.