Simulative study of error propagation in target tracking based on time synchronization error in wireless sensor networks

Acoustic target tracking is one of the application areas of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in which time synchronization error influences the results of target tracking. Algebraic numerical methods are used to solve simultaneous equations of target tracking. A more efficient approach is to use algebraic geometry for solving simultaneous equations of target tracking, but the analytic study of error propagation in this approach is difficult. Alternatively, a simulative approach can be used for computing the relation between time synchronization error and target tracking error. This relation helps the middleware layer of WSNs to adjust the resynchronization time of the network more accurately in support of end users' and application programs' requirements for quality of service (QoS). This paper presents two different simulations for extracting the relation between time synchronization error and target tracking error.