Distributed Target Tracking by Solving Average Consensus Problem on Sensor Network Measurements

In this paper, a new algorithm is presented to drastically reduce communication overhead in distributed (decentralized) single target tracking in a wireless sensor network. This algorithm is based on a new approach to solving the average consensus problem and the use of distributed particle filters. For the algorithm of this paper, unlike the common algorithms that solve an average consensus problem just to approximate the global likelihood function to calculate the particle importance weights in distributed tracking, a new model for observation is presented based on the Gaussian approximation, which only solves the problem Consensus is applied to the mean on the received observations of the nodes in the network (and not to approximate the global likelihood function). These innovations significantly reduce the exchange of information between network nodes and as a result uses much less energy resources. In different scenarios, the efficiency of the proposed algorithm has been compared with the centralized algorithm and the distributed algorithm based on the graph, and the simulation results show that the communication overhead of the network is greatly reduced in exchange for an acceptable drop in tracking accuracy by using our proposed algorithm.