Tracking moving object via a sensor network with partial information broadcasting scheme

Tracking moving object is one of the key applications of wireless sensor networks. A wireless sensor network is often constrained with the restrictive power and processing capability of each node, and the limited communication bandwidth. We develop a partial information broadcasting scheme (PIBS) for moving object tracking. The relation between communication capacity and tracking accuracy under PIBS is quantified, in which all the nodes take individual measurements and only some nodes broadcast the data. A ¿Good Estimates First Broadcast¿ (GEFB) policy is developed to improve the estimates. The numerical results show that the PIBS together with the GEFB policy can reduce a large amount of communication load with minor degradation in tracking accuracy.