Prediction-based protocol for mobile target tracking in wireless sensor networks

Remote tracking for mobile targets is one of the most important applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A target tracking protocol– exponential distributed predictive tracking (EDPT) is proposed. To reduce energy waste and response time, an improved predictive algorithm–exponential smoothing predictive algorithm (ESPA) is presented. With the aid of an additive proportion and differential (PD) controller, ESPA decreases the system predictive delay effectively. As a recovery mechanism, an optimal searching radius (OSR) algorithm is applied to calculate the optimal radius of the recovery zone. The simulation results validate that the proposed EDPT protocol performes better in terms of track failed ratio, energy waste ratio and enlarged sensing nodes ratio, respectively.