Target Tracking with QoS Support in Large Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Quality of Service (QoS) is important in the application of target tracking in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). When a target appears, it will trigger an event from one or more sensors. A target can only be accurately detected if a certain number of event packets are received by the sink in a predetermined detection time interval. In this paper, we propose a buffer management scheme based on event ordering to achieve QoS. We also propose a directional QoS-aware routing protocol (DQRP) for the dissemination of the event ordering list. After the dissemination, a priority queue buffer management scheme is used to ensure QoS. Our buffer management scheme works in conjunction with DQRP to ensure accurate as well as energy-efficient target detection in the presence of multiple targets. The novelty of our network architecture is that a distributed admission control scheme is implemented on each node based on a geographic routing algorithm. In our scenario, a target can only be accurately detected if a certain number of event packets are received by the sink in a predetermined detection time interval. Our main performance metric is the number of targets/events being detected. Our protocol maximizes the number of targets being detected.