Energy efficient on-site tracking of mobile target in wireless sensor networks

Tracking moving targets is one of the important problems of wireless sensor networks. Many approaches have been proposed to deal with this problem (Yang, H. and Sikdar, B., 2003; Gupta, R. and Das, S.R., 2003; Yu-Chee Tseng et al., 2003; Hegazy, T. and Vachtsevanos, G., 2004). Once the information about a moving target is received, subsequent actions are taken in most cases. Sometimes, a physical presence in the vicinity of the moving target is required to take these actions. We characterize this nature of tracking as the on-site tracking problem. Applying existing approaches to solve the on-site tracking problem normally requires excessive message communication and navigation strategies. We propose an ant-based approach which effectively exploits the mobility dependency property inherent in the system to solve the on-site tracking problem. Our approach is simple and energy efficient.