An Energy Efficient Approach to Dynamic Coverage in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract- Tracking of mobile targets is an important application of sensor networks. This is a non-trivial problem as the increased accuracy of tracking results in an overall reduction in the lifetime of the sensor network. In this paper, the tracking issue is first addressed through the determination of a reduced cover for the region of interest. Tracking algorithms are then developed using a reduced set of sensor nodes. The tradeoffs involved in the energy efficient tracking of the target are studied and the performance of the distributed tracking algorithms is compared with well known strategies from the literature. It is shown that the gain in energy savings comes at the expense of reduced quality of tracking. The algorithms guarantee the robustness and accuracy of tracking as well as the extension of the overall system lifetime. Numerical simulations are presented to validate the performance of the proposed algorithms. Index Terms: ad-hoc and sensor networks, tracking, 3D coverage, energy efficiency, reduced cover