Cross-Domain Buoy Placement for Underwater Target Tracking in Marine Wireless Networks

Underwater target tracking can continuously provide position estimates of the interested target. It is the basis for marine applications. Usually, a proper deployment topology of the available devices could guarantee that the optimal tracking performance can be obtained. This paper investigates the optimal placement problem of buoys under a cross-domain tracking framework, where the buoys are deployed with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to perform coarse tracking and provide prior information for the subsequent arriving underwater vehicles. By taking advantage of the high-speed movement of UAVs, the disadvantage of underwater tracking (difficult to quickly form an effective tracking formation when the target is first found) is made up. Specifically, the placement is formulated as a convex optimization problem based on the idea of sensor selection, and the output makes the buoys and pre-deployed anchors form a combination that optimizes the tracking accuracy while guaranteeing the detection probability. Moreover, the target mobility and deployment convenience are also considered to favor practical uses. Through various simulation results, the advantages of the proposed method are illustrated.