A Monte Carlo Method for Mobile Target Counting

This paper addresses the problem of target counting based on the Monte Carlo simulation. We rely on an Accept-Reject process to guide the placement of virtual targets in a virtual sensor field, which has exactly the same sensor layout as the real one. The objective of this construction is to generate a virtual target energy landscape whose shape is close enough to an energy landscape estimated from the real sensor readings. Based on the number of virtual targets placed on the virtual field and the total virtual and real target energy volumes, the number of real targets can be estimated. We consider both single-epoch and multi-epoch sensor readings and our theoretical analysis indicates that by exploiting the information from multiple epochs, our approach yields a target count that approximately converges to the true target count when the number of epochs is large enough. Extensive comparison based simulation study has been performed and the results verify the effectiveness of our target counting algorithms.