A Range-Only Tracking Algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks

Over the last few years, target tracking in wireless sensor networks has become a topic of particular interest. This paper presents a tracking system intended for deployment in distributed wireless sensor networks. The approach is inspired from the concept of deploying sensor nodes in an ad-hoc manner and based on the aggregate amount of information they provide, perform tracking of mobile objects. Static sensor nodes, with known locations, act as anchor nodes providing range-only measurements at each time step. The proposed system is modeled using a nonlinear state-space model which reflects a real world tracking scenario. The batch of range measurements made available at each sampling step, is used to estimate the target´s desired kinematic properties. In order to infer the state of the target at each time step, a particle filter algorithm has been designed to approximate the required posterior distribution of the state vector. The system´s operation was simulated and execution examples demonstrate the algorithm´s accuracy as well as the ability to effectively cope with manoeuvring targets.