Profile-based energy minimisation strategy for Object Tracking Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are composed of power-restrained nodes that limit their lifetime, since the sources of energy are often non-replaceable. In this work, we deal with the power consumption problem in one application of WSNs: objects tracking in a monitored region. Different protocols have been proposed to minimize the energy consumption in such environments. Most of them are based in prediction techniques to know in advance the locations of the object, taking advantage of this information to switch off the sensor nodes as much as possible. However, little work has been done to utilize regularity in the object´s behavior to reduce energy consumption. In this paper we propose a profile-based algorithm (PBA) that aims to use the information contained in the network and in the object itself to optimize energy consumption, thus extending lifetime. Simulations show that this method outperforms prediction-based strategies for a wide range of predictability values