An Improved Dynamic Coalition Generation Based on Ant Colony Algorithm for Target Detection in Wireless Sensor Network

The cooperation among sensor nodes is a significant issue in large-scale, complicated Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN). Target tracking is a canonical application of WSN. The dynamic coalition mechanism in WSN for target detection is an important method to improve the tracking quality which saves much energy. An energy efficient coalition formation algorithm is needed because the energy resource of WSN is restricted. In this paper, we propose a WSN dynamic coalition formation based on Ant Colony algorithm (DCF_AC). The sink node of every group is the group head, which knows the global coordinate of its own and inclines to wake sensor nodes around the target with high residual energy to form coalition periodically. The algorithm can balance the energy consumption among sensor nodes, so as to extend the network lifetime for more tasks. The results of experiments concludes the validity of this algorithm.