Continuous Object Tracking via Joint Global-Local Binary Tree Topological Transformation in Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

Frequent activities in marine energy exploration and transportation have led to the ongoing presence of continuous objects, such as oil spills and radioactive waste, in the ocean. This article focuses on enhancing the understanding of these objects’ boundaries for accurate assessment of their shape, coverage, and evolution. We introduce a continuous object tracking algorithm named JGL-COT, based on joint global-local binary tree topological transformations and specifically designed for underwater acoustic sensor networks. The contribution of JGL-COT lies in its ability to leverage the correlation between the morphologies of a continuous object's boundaries over time, alternating between global and local binary tree topological transformations. When the present boundary features a strong resemblance to its previous form, JGL-COT switches to a local transformation by establishing a semi-infinite region. Otherwise, it transitions to a global transformation. Following this, JGL-COT chooses a group of binary tree-structured cells for boundary mapping, creating virtual boundary nodes as sampling points for boundary fitting. Building upon graph theory, we derive the lower bound on the effectiveness and time complexity of the proposed joint global and local binary tree topological transformations when applied to object boundary tracking. Experiments in both realistic and simulated settings confirm that JGL-COT provides highly accurate tracking and significantly reduces network energy consumption.