Multi-step Sensor Scheduling for Energy-Efficient High-Accuracy Collaborative Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor scheduling is essential to collaborative target tracking in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Most existing sensor scheduling schemes are implemented via the single-step mechanism. To improve the overall performance on energy efficiency and tracking accuracy, in this paper, we propose a novel multi-step sensor scheduling approach using the branch-and-bound algorithm. The approach adopts the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) to predict the tracking accuracy over a multi-step horizon, and an energy consumption model to calculate the corresponding energy cost. Simulation results demonstrate that, compared to the single-step sensor scheduling approach, the proposed approach can decrease the energy consumption and increase the tracking accuracy significantly.