DISTRACT: cooperative distributed target in multi-tier heterogeneous wireless sensor networks (WSN)

随着传感器设备技术的进步，无线传感器网络(WSNs)已经可以部署到各种实际应用中，包括复杂的目标跟踪和环境监测。这些进展主要归功于无线传感器网络的分布式特性，它使得数据的感知、收集、存储、处理和传播成为可能。然而，这类应用的设计仍然是一个基本的和开放的研究问题，这是因为我们没有相应的通用和广泛的原则来设计通过无线传感器网络的目标跟踪，这提出了许多新的挑战需要解决。与以往的研究不同，我们认为，在多层无线传感器网络中考虑节点部署及其导致的拓扑、定位、覆盖、数据保真度、数据融合和传播、数据存储以及可扩展的目标跟踪是网络功能的关键，该方法还可以提高这些应用的性能并显著减少目标跟踪误差，因为上述问题都是相互关联的，当部署在一起时都可以优化。我们与业界的合作伙伴合作，建议使用统一的方法设计一套基于多层无线传感器网络的目标跟踪协议。我们将在传感器网络的真实测试床上验证我们提出的解决方案。我们相信，DISRAC提出的技术和原型平台将为无线传感器网络未来的各种研究项目和应用提供孵化器。我们的目标是围绕无线传感器网络建立一个持续的研究核心，用于目标跟踪和其他应用。 PI正在响应安大略省和加拿大公共卫生、安全和应急准备部门日益增长的需求，即使用无线传感器基础设施设计强大而可靠的目标跟踪，以关键监控上下文感知的物理环境。

With the advances of sensor devices' technology, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have reached the point where it is now possible to deploy them for all sorts of real applications that involve complex target tracking and environmental monitoring. These advances are mainly due to the distributed nature of WSNs which enables the sensing, gathering, storing, processing and disseminating of data. However, the design of such applications still remains a fundamental and open research problem; this is because we do not have the corresponding general and broad principles for designing target tracking through a WSN, which poses numerous new sets of challenges to be resolved. As opposed to previous studies, we believe that a unified approach that considers node deployment and its consequently induced topology, localization, coverage, data fidelity, data fusion and dissemination, data storage, and scalable object tracking in multi-tier WSNs is essential to network functions that can be employed in many different target tracking based classes of applications; this approach can also improve these applications' performance and reduce target tracking errors significantly since the aforementioned issues are all interrelated and can all be optimized when deployed together. In collaboration with our partners in industry, we propose to design a multi-tier WSN based target tracking suite of protocols using the unified approach. We shall validate our proposed solutions in a real test bed of sensor networks. We believe the technologies and prototype platform proposed in the DisTrac will act as an incubator for various future research projects and applications of WSNs. Our objective is to build a continuing research nucleus around WSNs for target tracking and other applications. The PIs are responding to the growing demands from the public health safety and emergency preparedness department within Ontario and Canada to design a robust and reliable target tracking using wireless sensors infrastructure for critical monitoring of context aware physical environments.