Optimal Search Theory for Target Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Target detection is a basic requisition in wireless sensor networks for several applications such as topology formation, route establishment etc. Traditionally, flooding strategies are used to find the target. However, flooding is not energy effective for low cost low energy sensor networks. Moreover, considering the imperfect data transmission environment, flooding may cause serious channel congestion. To seek for efficient flooding strategies, many previous researchers focus on producing optimal broadcasting strategies, with assumption that communications between all nodes are reliable. However, for real-world wireless sensor networks, this aim as well as the assumption may be inefficient. In this paper we consider the imperfect data transmission environment and propose an efficient target detection mechanism - Optimal Search Theory Based Target Detection. In this mechanism, we take advantage of the clustering methodology and optimal search theory to achieve good performance. Simulation shows our mechanism can find out the target with a maximum probability and does not increase the search cost compared with other flooding mechanisms.