Energy-aware location error handling for object tracking applications in wireless sensor networks

Developing an efficient object tracking system has been an interesting challenge in wireless sensor network communities. Due to the severe resource constraints of sensor hardware, the accuracy of the tracking system could be compromised by the processing power or energy consumption. A sophisticated tracking algorithm is therefore not applicable to sensor applications, and any tracking system should explicitly consider the energy issue. In this paper, we present energy-aware location error handling techniques, namely error avoidance and error correction, to prevent and handle errors efficiently. Real situations such as an unexpected change in the mobile event’s direction, failure of event detection, or transmission failure of an error message are considered in the design of the proposed mechanisms. The prototype system is built with real sensor hardware, and the functionality is validated in real experiments. The experimental evaluation, together with simulation analysis, shows that the proposed mechanism saves energy while achieving good tracking accuracy.