EATT: Energy aware target tracking for wireless sensor networks using TinyOS

Wireless sensor networks consist of various sensor nodes which operate in a memory, energy and bandwidth constrained environment. Target tracking is an important application in wireless sensor networks and in this paper we propose an energy aware target tracking (EATT) algorithm. Energy efficiency is obtained due to the novel concept of tracking being performed in a collaborative manner by different cluster heads instead of using a base station. This helps to minimize the energy required for communication. Taking into consideration the unique energy constraints of motes we reduce the computational complexity of the tracking algorithm by using simple optimization technique. In this paper, we shall briefly discuss our tracking approach and then focus on the advantages of program optimization in wireless sensor networks. The work presented demonstrates the viability of achieving real time energy efficient target tracking by using simple optimization technique for a tracking algorithm implemented in TinyOS. The simulation results show that the proposed technique reduces the energy consumption by at least 20% and memory requirement by at least 6% as compared to the conventional techniques used in wireless sensor network.