Real-time object tracking in wireless sensor network

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is a networked embedded system which comprises of spatially distributed nodes. Each node possesses sensing, processing and communication capabilities. This paper presents an object tracking method in wireless sensor network framework. The tracking system monitors trajectory of a moving object in real-time and determines exact location of the mobile entity. In proposed method, sensor node utilizes camera and distance sensors for object detection and an efficient tracking algorithm is incorporated for real-time object tracking using WSN paradigm. The location of object is continuously monitored by sensors and coordinates are timely communicated to the base station. The system nodes are active all the time for object detection while wireless communication between sensor node and base station is only performed if there is change in position of target object. The proposed WSN design utilizes star topology for communication between nodes and base station. The proposed method is tested for indoor object tracking and a comparison analysis of camera and distance based tracking is performed for different object trajectories and environmental conditions.