Optimal path selection for quantized target tracking in distributed sensor networks

Due to the limited energy supplies of nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSN), optimizing their design under energy constraints, reducing their communication costs are of paramount importance. To this goal and in order to efficiently solve the problem of target tracking in WSN with quantized measurements, we propose to jointly estimate the target position and select the optimal communication path between the cluster head (CH) and the slave sensors. Firstly, we select the optimal communication path between the candidate sensor and the CH. Then, we estimate the target position using Quantized Variational Filtering (QVF) algorithm. The optimal communication path is selected as well as the highest signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the CH. The efficiency of the proposed method is validated by extensive simulations in target tracking for wireless sensor networks.