A Tracking System for Wireless Embedded Nodes Using Time-of-Flight Ranging

Abstract

Abstract-In this work we present the design, development and evaluation of a real-time target tracking system for wireless embedded nodes, capable of effectively tracking manoeuvring targets. The proposed tracking system is designed to operate solely on range measurements obtained with the use of a two-way Time-of-Flight method without the need for additional hardware being incorporated in the nodes. To address the challenge of coping with manoeuvring targets, the tracking problem is formulated as a dynamical estimation problem where an adaptive multiple-model approach is employed to represent the motion pattern of manoeuvring targets. The ranging observations are produced in real-time and used as inputs to a Particle Filter algorithm which produces the estimates of the target's kinematic variables. Simulations are provided to assess the effect of several factors on the system's performance. Ultimately, the entire system is implemented on commercially available hardware and tested in an outdoor deployment. A total of 25 experiments demonstrate an average rms accuracy of 2.6m for position and 1.9m/s for velocity, in a 15m x 15m area. Such performance, which is additionally confirmed from simulation results reveals the potential of the proposed range-only system in application scenarios where real-time tracking of mobile targets is needed.

Efficient Aerial Data Collection with UAV in Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

“…If the location information comes from an unknown node, then the value of fits the cascade Gaussian International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks 7 (1) for every unknown node do (2) open the log file; (3) initialize the position estimate to the entire space; (4) for every row in the file do (5) initialize constraint to ; (6) set pointer to mean 1; (7) while !End of (row) do (8) read mean, stdev; (9) compute new constraint ; (10) = + ; (11) increment pointer to; (12) po in tt oth en extm ea n; (13) end while (14) = ∩ ; (15) end for (16) end for…”

“…; Output: A series of points represent the final solution min ; (1) for V = 0; V < ; V++ do (2) for ℎ = 0; ℎ < ; ℎ++ do (3) Calculate the non-empty sub-grid set (V, ℎ); (4) for every element in (V, ℎ) do (5) Calculate the minimum cover set (V, ℎ) = MINCOVER( ); (6) M e r g e (V, ℎ) into global mininum cover (V, ℎ) = ⋃ ∈ (V,ℎ) (V, ℎ);…”

“…(1) for V = 0; V < ; V++ do (2) for ℎ = 0; ℎ < ; ℎ++ do (3) Calculate the non-empty sub-grid set (V, ℎ); (4) for every element in (V, ℎ) do (5) Calculate the minimum cover set (V, ℎ) = MINCOVER( );…”

“…(1) Set sort as the result of sorting opt using primary flight path; (2) all nodes in opt will be obtained. And the sequence of node in opt decides the access sequence of node in the monitored environment.…”

“…The researches of WSN have been applied in different areas. In [2, 3], the authors generally summarized the application of WSN in the military field, environment monitoring, warehouse management, medical care, and so forth. According to the scale of the sensor networks applied in different fields, sensor networks can be divided into large-scale sensor networks and small-scale sensor networks.…”