Target tracking in a WSN with directional sensors using electronic beam steering

Target tracking is one of the major applications of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In traditional target tracking with directional sensors, the target can be detected only when it is in the field of view (FoV) of a sensor. The target´s track is obtained with the help of filtering algorithms/techniques at the base station (BS). These techniques sometimes lead to incorrect location estimation of the target due to measurement errors and noise. It is ideally required that the main sensing lobe/FoV of the sensor follow the target, whenever the target is in the FoV of the sensor. Based on the above considerations, this paper proposes an efficient solution to target tracking with the help of beam steering enabled directional sensors mounted on the nodes for tracking the targets. At every step of beam steering, the sensor node updates the location of the target to the nearest cluster head or base station. Each sensor will continuously monitor the target till it crosses the FoV or sensing range of the sensor. The proposed method has been implemented in OMNeT++ and the performance of the algorithm has been evaluated with directional active and passive sensors. Different target mobilities and different sensor FoV angles have been considered. The results show that the proposed method successfully tracked the target and located the target at every instant of time. Directional active sensors yield more accurate results when compared to passive sensors. It was also seen that the location accuracy of the target was mainly dependent on the FoV angle and FoV/sensing radius of the sensor.