Activation Scheduling for a Binary Sensor Network

This paper examines a sensor scheduling problem for target tracking using a network of distributed passive sensors. It considers how to schedule sensor activation to minimise bandwidth and battery usage while maintaining track accuracy. The sensor network is made up of simple acoustic, binary proximity sensors. Four different scheduling methods are considered. Two of these methods are heuristic while the other two are optimal, one-step ahead schedulers for differing objectives. The performance of all four algorithms is compared using simulations. The results show that it is possible to obtain adequate performance with only a subset of the sensor field active at any one time.