Object Tracking in Wireless Sensor Systems

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Title: "Object Tracking in Wireless Sensor Systems"

by

Mr. HONG, Ke David

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensors are used to locate and track 
objects based on their emitting signals (i.e. heat, sound, vibration). Due 
to the inherent power constraint of wireless sensor nodes, this kind of 
object tracking applications also face the challenge of energy efficiency. 
In spite of some general techniques in achieving high energy efficiency in 
WSNs, a tailored-made solution may further improve the energy efficiency 
of object tracking in WSNs.

In this thesis, we address a tradeoff between energy consumption and 
tracking quality for object tracking sensors in an omnidirectional sensing 
model. To well balance these two factors, we formulate a reasonable 
mathematical model of the trade-off, based on which we design a fully 
distributed and suboptimal tracking solution in the setting of a sample 
extraction problem. Experiment results indicate high optimality of our 
decision making strategy on different tracking scenarios, and also imply 
the existence of the tradeoff. Moreover, we extend the energy efficiency 
issue to a directional sensing model. A dynamic object coverage problem in 
directional sensor networks, which has not been addressed by any academic 
literature before, is proposed to obtain higher energy efficiency in 
object tracking using directional sensors.


Date            :       25 May 2011 (Wednesday)

Time            :       11am to 11:40am

Venue		:       4475 (lift 25-26)

Advisor         :       Dr. Zhang Qian

2nd reader      :	Dr. Lei Chen