State-centric multi-sensor scheduling for target tracking in wireless sensor networks

In current sensor scheduling schemes for target tracking in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), either based on single sensor or multiple sensors, a next tasking sensor is selected from 1-hop communication neighbors of the current tracking leader. They will fail when the target moves fast and outside the detection range of any neighbor at the next time step. In this paper a novel state-centric multi-sensor scheduling scheme (SCMSS) is presented where the multiple next tasking sensors are selected from those sensors, according to the state prediction of the target movement, that likely detect the target at the next time step. Information is exchanged between the current tracking leader and the next tasking sensors via single-hop or multi-hop minimal energy paths. A sensor that will consume minimum energy for collecting next measurements is selected from the tasking group as the new tracking leader. Simulation results show that, compared with multi-sensor scheduling algorithm with single hop configuration, SCMSS can achieve better performance with less energy cost for different target speeds.