RARE: An Energy-Efficient Target Tracking Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy efficiency for target tracking in wireless sensor networks is very important and can be improved by reducing the number of nodes involved in communications. We propose two algorithms, RARE-area and RARE-node to reduce the number of nodes participating in tracking and so increase energy efficiency. The RARE-area algorithm ensures that only nodes that receive a given quality of data participate in tracking and the RARE-node algorithm ensures that any nodes with redundant information do not participate in tracking. Simulation studies show significant energy savings are obtained with implementation of either the RARE-area algorithm alone or both RARE-area and RARE-node algorithms together.