Energy aware target tracking in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs)

Abstract

Tracking targets in Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks (UWSNs) is more challenging than the terrestrial Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) because in an UWSN, Radio Frequency (RF) communication is not possible and acoustic channel is used. The propagation delay in acoustic channel is much higher and variable than that of RF channel. To track a target in an UWSN accurately, it is required to keep many sensors active. But if the sensors are always kept active, the energy consumption is high which causes the network failure. Besides in an UWSN, due to the high and variable propagation delay in data transmission, information management of a moving target is quite challenging. In this thesis, we provide an energy efficient target tracking solution for UWSNs. We give an algorithm for target detection with keeping a low number of sensors active which increases the network lifetime. Simulation results show that our tracking method is more energy efficient compared to a popular tracking method in UWSNs. We also compare the estimation of the target’s position with the true target trajectory, and we find that our detected trajectory matches with the true trajectory.