Self-organization of unattended wireless acoustic sensor networks for ground target tracking

A distributed, self-organization algorithm for ground target tracking using unattended acoustic sensor network is developed. Instead of using microphone arrays, each sensor node in the sensor network uses only a single microphone as its sensing device. This design can greatly reduce the size and cost of each sensor node and allow more flexible deployment of the sensor network. The self-organization algorithm presented in this paper can dynamically select proper sensor nodes to form the localization sensor groups that can work as a virtual microphone array to perform energy efficient target localization and tracking. To achieve this, we use a time-delay based bearing estimation plus triangulation for source localization in the sensor network. Major error sources of the localization method like time delay estimation, bearing calculation and triangulation are analyzed and sensor selection criteria are developed. Based on these criteria and neighborhood information of each sensor node, a distributed self-organization algorithm is developed. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.