International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems

Hierarchically Coordinated Power

Management for Target Tracking
in Wireless Sensor Networks

Regular Paper



Feng Juan
1,*
, Baowang Lian
1
and Zhao Hongwei
1


1 School of Electronic Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xian, China
* Corresponding author E-mail: fengjuankh@hotmail.com

Received 20 Jun 2012; Accepted 21 Feb 2013

DOI: 10.5772/56201

2013 Juan et al.; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.


Abstract Energy efficiency is very important for wireless
sensor networks (WSNs) since sensor nodes have a
limited energy supply from a battery. So far, a lot
research has focused on this issue, while less emphasis
hasbeenplacedontheadaptivesleeptimeforeachnode
with a consideration for the application constraints. In
this paper, we propose a hierarchically coordinated
power management (HCPM) approach, which both
addresses the energy conservation problem and reduces
the packet forwarding delay for target tracking WSNs
based on a virtualgridbased network structure. We
extend the network lifetime by adopting an adaptive
sleep scheduling scheme that combines the local power
management (PM) and the adaptive coordinate PM
strategiestoscheduletheactivitiesofthesensornodesat
the surveillance stage. Furthermore, we propose a
hierarchicalstructureforthetrackingstage.Experimental
results show that the proposed approach has a greater
capability of extending the network lifetime while
maintaining a short transmission delay when compared
withtheprotocolwhichdoesnotconsidertheapplication
constraintsintargettrackingsensornetworks.

KeywordsEnergyEfficiency,TargetTracking,WSN
1.Introduction
In a wireless sensor network (WSN), sensor nodes are
always deployed in an unattended natural environment
and are of an enormous amount. It is unfeasible to
replenish their energy by replacing their battery after
deployment. Therefore, reducing energy consumption to
prolongthelifeofthenetworkisthemostcriticalissuein
WSN.

Power management (PM) is an efficient way to conserve

energy after the sensor nodes have been deployed [1].
The main idea of PM is to dynamically make the nodes
sleeptoreducetheirenergyconsumption.ThePMhasto
decide when a sensor node should go to sleep and the
amount of time to stay so. In order to devise a more
efficient PM mechanism, the application constraints
should be considered, mainly in sensor networks that
strongly depend on an application. In target tracking
sensor network, the users are only interested in the
occurrenceofacertainevent.Theseinterestingeventsdo
not happen frequently and they commonly have long
intervals of inactivity. Specifically, the target tracking
scenario can be divided into two stages, namely,
1 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
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Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013
surveillance and tracking. During the surveillance state,
there is no target of interest in the sensing field, but the
sensors are ready to detect any possible occurrences.
While in the tracking stage, the network reacts in
response to any moving targets, and collectively track
andrecordtheroamingpathofamovingtarget.Assuch,
whennotargetappears,itwouldbeasignificantwasteof
energyifallthenodesalwaysremainedactive.Moreover,
a target moves randomly in the sensing field. We do not
know the next position of the target. If we blindly turn
thesensornodeoffduringeachidleperiod,wewillmiss
someeventsorwastemoreenergy.

A lot of pioneering research in the area of energy

conservation for WSNs has focused on dynamic power
management (DPM) schemes to minimize the energy
consumption of sensor nodes, such as [3, 4,5]. However,
the existing works have the follow limitations: (1) the
sleepperiodofsensornodescannotchange basedonthe
position of the target. As a result, many nodes far away
fromthetargetconsumeenergyinactivemode,butthey
donotdetectatarget.(2)InthecoordinatePMapproach,
whenanodedecidesifitshouldgointosleepstate,itwill
usethedetectedinformationfromitsneighboursinorder
toexactlyestimateifthetargetwillbeinitssensingarea
in the next instant. Due to dense nodes in WSNs, the
informationfromadjacentnodesissimilarandrelated.If
every node sends the detected information to its
neighbours,lotsofenergywillbewastedand,atthesame
time, it will result in information redundancy. (3) It is
difficult to have both energy conservation and
transmission delay reduction. Since the sensed data is
sent to the sink by multihop routing, more nodes are in
the sleep state and longer delays are introduced in the
packet delivery because during the sleep phases nodes
cannot communicate and packets cannot be transmitted
untiltherelayordestinationnodeswakeup.

With these issues in mind, we propose a hierarchically

coordinated power management (HCPM) approach that
considers the application constraints in order to exploit
sleep and active intervals. Our main goal is to choose an
optimalsleeptimeforeachnodesoastomakethesystem
adaptive and energyefficient. We manage the power of
sensor nodes based on a gridbased network structure,
which divides the entire sensing field into virtual grids.
In each grid, one node is selected as the grid head (GH)
and others are grid members (GMs). It is a simple,
scalable and efficient method for the implementation of
WSN applications [1, 2, 1619]. In recent works, grid
basedsensornetworkarchitecturehasbeenwidelyused,
such as for data gathering [16, 17], network coverage [1,
2], and other applications [18]. In my work, dividing the
networkinto gridbasedonthegeographicalinformation
is a highly efficient method because the tracking
applicationalwaysrelatestothegeographicalpositionof
the target. In detail, the contributions of this paper are
threeaspects:
1. Proposing a new adaptive PM approach: our
approach combines the fixed sleep and adaptive
sleep interval. In each grid, one node is selected as
the grid head (GH) and others are grid members
(GMs). The GH adopts the local PM policy and the
fixed sleep interval to maintain synchronization and
reducethedatatransmissiondelay,whereastheGMs
adopt an adaptive sleep time according to their
positiontosaveenergy.
2. Better balancing of the energy consumption of
sensor nodes: when there is no target, the interior
nodes can sleep more because the GMs have an
adaptive sleep time according to the distance
betweenthegridsandthenetworkbordersothatthe
energy consumption between the fringe and interior
nodes are balanced since the interior nodes always
takeonmorerelaytasks.
3. Proposing a hierarchical structure: in the tracking
stage, the network can be divided into several sub
areas.Onlyonesubareausesthetrackingstagesleep
policy, while others can still use the surveillance
sleep policy. This makes the network more adaptive
andenergyefficient.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2

givesanoverviewofrelatedworks.Then,Section3states
thespecificproblem.Afterthat,theproposedapproachis
described in detail in Section 4. The experimental results
areshowninSection5.Finally,weconcludethepaperin
Section6.
2.RelatedWorks
To achieve a satisfactory network lifetime, several
methodologies have been proposed at the hardware and
system levels [3][4] to design energy efficient
communication processes. In addition, DPM schemes
havebeenproposedtoreducepowerconsumption[5][6].

The simplest method of PM for sensor nodes is using a

Fully Synchronized Pattern [7]. In this case all nodes
wake up periodically every wakeup instant for a fixed
time. Then, they return to sleep until the next wakeup
instant. In [8], a further improvement was achieved with
the local PM approach, which allows nodes to switch off
their radio when no activity is detected for at least a
timeout value. Each node keeps a timer to record how
long no event has been detected and goes to sleep after
thistimertimesout.However,theseschemesarenotvery
flexible since the size of the sleep and active periods is
fixed and does not adapt to variations in the target
trackingapplicationscenario.

The ideal PM for target tracking is the ondemand

scheme, in which a node should be woken only when it
needs to execute its task. The implementation of such
schemes typically requires two different channels: a data
2 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
channel for normal data communication and a wakeup
channel for awaking nodes when needed, such as in [9].
Unfortunately, this scheme is almost always impractical
becauseitcanbeonlyappliedwhenthedistancebetween
nodesisveryshort(afewmetres).Moreover,thewakeup
radio is costly and generally it is not provided with
commonlyusedsensorplatforms.

The authors in [10] propose an adaptive coordinate PM

policy, which extends the local PM decision to include the
timeoutvaluesoftheneighboursinthenetwork.Inthisway,
nodes will be aware of the timeout status of their
neighbours, and can enter into lowpower mode if it and
eachofitsneighboursaresimultaneouslyinatimeoutstate.
In [11], a voting PM policy is proposed. Each node
broadcasts detected information periodically and collects
this information from its neighbours. If enough of the
neighbours vote there is no target being detected, then the
nodeentersthesleepstate.However,duetothedensenodes
inWSNs,thenodesinanadjacentareahavesimilardetected
information. If every node broadcasts its detected
informationtoitsneighbours,itresultsinmoretransmission
energyconsumptionandinformationredundancy.

In[12],theauthorsdynamicallychangethesleepscheduleof
sensornodesbyconsideringhowmanyhopstherearefrom
the node to the target. However, when a node far from the
sinkdetectsatarget,ithastowaituntilthenodeswhichare
farfromthetargetandclosetothesinktowakeupbeforeit
can transmit its data. Thus, there will be a long data
transmission delay. In [13], the authors propose the
StaggeredSleepPatternwhichdividestimeintocyclesbased
on a time synchronization method. However, for target
tracking, this method is not energy efficient because all the
sensornodeshavetobewokenupeachcycle;nevertheless,
not all of the nodes will sense the target and the
implementation of global synchronization is not easy and
consumes lots of energy. In [14], asynchronous schemes
alloweachnodetowakeupindependentlybyguaranteeing
thattheactiveperiodsoftheirneighbourswillalwayshave
overlapped within the specified cycles. Although, this
protocol does not need a tight synchronization, it usually
results in a higher duty cycle for sensor nodes than
synchronouscounterparts.

Furthermore, to switch off the idle nodes, some

prediction algorithms were developed to predict the
target movement in [15]. Nevertheless, the prediction
algorithms are always implemented at the sink in a
centralized way with high computation complexity and
communication energy cost. This results in a lot of
communicationbetweensensornodesandthesinkwhich
consumeslotsofenergy.
3.Problemstatement
In the target tracking application, if a target appears
within the sensing area of a node, the node should be
awake in advance in order to sense the target and
transmitdata,ifnot,thetrackingperformanceisreduced.
However,thepowerconsumptioninsleepstateisusually
much lower than in the active or idle mode. Thus, the
sensor nodes may be put into a sleep mode as long as
possible in order to conserve energy. In this paper, it is
assumedthatasleepnodecannotbecommunicatedwith
orwoken upsoadecisiontoputanodeto sleepimplies
thatthisnodecannotbescheduledatafuturetimeuntilit
wakes. So estimating when sensor nodes should go to
sleepandtheidletimeofnodesarecrucialinPM.

On one hand, if all the sensor nodes adopt the same and
fixed sleep policy, lots of nodes will be in the idle state
andtheywillconsumealotofenergyandwillnotdetect
any targets. Therefore, this method is not suitable for a
targettrackingapplicationscenariowhereatargetmoves
dynamically, which only needs a portion of the nodes
neartothetargettoworkwhilsttheothernodescanbein
sleep state. Therefore, each node should be assigned the
maximum sleep time to save energy. Theoretically, to
guarantee the tracking performance, the maximum sleep
time of the node Ni is calculated by the following
equation,

2 2
t arg i t arg i sense
max d u
max
(x x ) (y y ) R
t
v


(1)
where(xtarg,ytarg)isthelocationofthetarget,and(xn,yn)is
the location of node Ni. Rsense is the sensing range of the
sensor node. vmax stands for the possible maximum
velocity of the target and it is decided by an application
scenario.
d
is the transition time from idle state to the
sleepstateand
u
isthetransitiontimeback.

On the other hand, if all the sensor nodes adopt a sleep

time appropriate to the position of the target, each node
hasadifferentsleepintervalandanasynchronouswake
up instant. It results in a longer data transmission delay
that is also a critical issue to be considered in the nodes
sleeping policies.Thedelayisdefinedasthetimebetween
the moment a source sends a packet and the moment a
sinkreceivesthepacket.Whenanodewantstosenddata,
it has to wait until the relay nodes wake up from the
sleep mode so that there will be a long delay for data
transmission in a multihop manner. In detail, the delay
canbecalculatedas,

H
trans l ,h l ,h u proc,h trans,h
h 1
d (t S t t )

(2)
Where H is the number of hops from the data source
node to the sink, and
l ,h
t is the remaining sleep time of
thehthhopnodeattimel.
l ,h
S denotesthestateoftheh
thhopnodeattimel,ifthenodeisactiveoridle,
l ,h
S 0 ,
otherwise,
l ,h
S 1 .
proc,h
t and
trans,h
t arerespectivelythe
3 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
www.intechopen.com
process and the transmission time at the hth hop node.
From Equation (2), we can see that the longer the sleep
time of the node, the longer the data transmission delay
that occurs. Moreover, if the sensor nodes have
synchronized active time, there is a relatively small
transmissiondelay.

Soweseethatthetaskistofindthemostefficientmethod
with which to assign the sleep time to the sensor nodes
under the given application constraints so that the total
network lifetime is extended with less data transmission
delay.
4.HierarchicallyCoordinatedPMApproach
A.NetworkModel
WeconsiderastaticWSNwhichiscomposedofonesink
andsomerandomlyandevenlydistributedsensornodes
Ni,i e[1,n]inatwodimensionalsensingfield,wherenis
the number of the deployed nodes. The sink is assumed
to have an infinite power supply and it gathers sensed
informationfromsensornodes.Thenodesdistributionis
mutuallyindependentwithdensity=n/Ssens,whereSsens
is the area of the sensing field. We assume each node is
aware of its location after deployment (e.g., using some
localizationtechniques)[21].LetXi(xi,yi), 1 i n s s bethe
locationofnodeNi.

Figure1.Illustrationofagridstructuredsensornetwork
Furthermore, the whole sensing field is divided into small
equally sized grids and in each grid one node with the
most energy is selected as the GH. The network is
organized as shown in Fig.1. In the definition of this
virtual grid, each pair of nodes in the neighbouring and
diagonal grids can directly communicate with each other [1,
2].Letusassumethetransmissionrangeofasensornode
is Rt. The size of each grid is o o . In any two adjacent
grids, the distance between the two possible farthest
nodesmustnotbelargerthanRt.Therefore,weget:

2 2 2 t
t
R
(2 ) (2 ) R or
2 2
o o o + s s (3)
Initially,allthesensornodesareintheidlestateandthey
have the same initial energy. One node in each grid is
randomly selected as the GH by broadcasting an
announcement (carrying its position and grid ID) after
waiting for a random time period R(Tran), which is a
discreterandomvariablewiththeuniformdistributionin
[0,Tran].ThefirstnodetobroadcastitsGHannouncement
in a grid will be the GH. After the process, there is one
GHineachgrid.Inaddition,eachgridhasagridID,and
the nodes in one grid have the same grid ID. A sensor
nodecancalculateitsgridID(u,v)fromitslocationXi(xi,
yi)as:

i 0 i 0
x x y y
u , v
o o
( (
= =
( (

(4)
where[]isasymbolwhichstandsfortheintegerpartof
the number in it. (x0, y0) is the location of the network
origin, which is a system parameter set in the network
initializationstage.Forthesakeofsimplicity,weassume
that u and v are positive. From the initial process, each
nodecanlearninformationaboutothernodesinthesame
grid and keep the information, e.g., the location and so
on.
B.SleepStateTransitionModel
In this paper, the sensor nodes have three states, active,
idle and sleep state. In the active state, the nodes sense
thetarget,andsendandreceivedata.Intheidlestate,the
node prepares for detection and receives messages from
others. While in sleep mode, the sensor node cannot
execute any function and it cannot be woken up
externally but instead has to set an internal timer to
determinethenexttimetowake.

Figure2.Sleepstatestransitionlatencyandpower
Fig.2 shows the powertime curves for the transition of
the sleep states. Each sleep state sk has power
consumption Pk. Thetransition timefromthe activestate
and back are denoted by d and u , respectively. From
that we can see that the sleep state has less power
consumption but incurs latency and needs energy to
awaken.LetusassumeaneventisdetectedbynodeNiat
a given moment in time.Ni finishes processing the event
attimet1andpredictsthenexteventwilloccurattimet2=
t1 + ti+
u
t . At time t1, Nn decides to transfer to sleep.So a
sleep time threshold Tth,k can be utilized to avoid losing
theevent,

d u 1
Th t t = + (5)
If (t2 t1)> Th1, Ni can go to sleep state sk at time t1 and
wake up at t2. Otherwise, when (t2 t1) Th1, Ni should
sleep
idle
active
time
get into
sleep
timer
driven
t1
state
t2
ti
u
d
4 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
not. So the energy saved from a state transition can be
calculatedasfollows,

( ) ( ) ( )
d d u u
i s
i i s i
P P
E P t P t
save, k
2
t t t t +
+
= + (6)
TheenergysavingmakessensewhenEsave, k>Ec,whereEc
is the additional energy consumption for the sleep state
transition.Sowecanworkoutthethreshold,

1 2
c d u i d u
tr tr
i s
2
E P P P ( )
Th
P P
t t t t + + +
=

(7)
wherePi,PsPtr
1
andPtr
2
arethepowerconsumptioninthe
idle, sleep and transition state from active to sleep state
andback,respectively.
C.PowerManagementintheSurveillanceStage
Duringsurveillancetime,thoughthereisnotargetinthe
sensing area, all the sensor nodes should remain at a
certainlevelofvigilancetogetreadyfordetecting.When
atargetentersintothesensingarea,ithastopassthrough
the borders of the area. For this reason, to avoid missing
thetargetandtohavelessenergyconsumption,itisonly
necessary for the sensor nodes in border grids to stay
alert and for the nodes in interior grids to have more
sleeptime as shown in Fig.3.EachGHstaysactiveinorder
totransmitdataandtheGMsineachgridhavethesame
sleep/awake period. Thesleep time of GMs is adaptively
adjusted by their GH according to the distance from the
gridtothenetworkborder.Thefurtherthegridfromthe
network border, the more sleep time the GMs have. Lj
(j=1,2)isthelayerofthegrid.

Figure3.ThePMinsurveillancestage
Attheinitial stage,eachGHcalculatesthe sleeptimefor
itsGMsandinformsthemofthis.Ineachperiod,theGH
decides if the sleep time of its GMs needs to be changed
based on the information received or detected (e.g. if the
GH received the detected information from one of its
GMs).Ifneeded,theGHwillsendanewsleeptimevalue
to its GMs, otherwise, the GMs will keep the same value
for their sleep period as before. When there is no target,
the GMs stay in the sleep mode according to the sleep
timevaluereceivedfromtheirGHandwakeupatcertain
timeslottodetectifatargethasappearedandtoreceive
a new sleep time value from their GH. To meet the
requirements of the applications and not miss the target,
themaximumsleeptime
bord
t oftheGMsinbordergrid
canbecalculatedasfollows,

bord
bord
max
R
t
v
= (8)
where
bord
R is the side length of the sensing area of the
nodesatthebordergrids.Accordingto(5)and(7),when
1 bord
Th t > and
2 bord
Th t > holds,thesleeptimeoftheGMs
inthebordergridscanbesetas
bord
t ,otherwiseitis0.

As the distance between grids and the network border

increases, the GMs can be allocated more sleep time to
save energy and GMs in the different grids can have
different sleep time schedules. In the interior grids, the
GHs calculate the maximum sleep time for the GMs in a
gridinLjasfollows,

min
int er
max max
d (j 1)
t
v v
o
= = (9)
wheredministheshortestdistancefromthecurrentgridto
theborder.

Similarly, when
1 int er
Th t > and
2 int er
Th t > holds, the
sleep time of the GMs in the interior grids can be set as
int er
t ,otherwiseitis0.

When one fringe node detects a target, it can report the

information of the moving target to its GH with less
delay. Then, the GH can inform its neighbouring GHs to
rearrangethesleeptimefortheirGMs.Thismethodnot
only conserves more energy but also grantees target
detection. Moreover, it can balance the energy
consumption between the border and the interior nodes
since the nodes in interior grids always take more relay
tasks. This scheme does not require global
synchronizationandsynchronizationwithinagridisnot
difficult with the coordination of the GH. At the same
time,thesenseddatacanbereportedtothesinkthrough
multipleGHswithlesstransmissiondelay.
D.PowerManagementintheTrackingStage
Inthetrackingstage,theGHshavethesamePMpolicyas
that in thesurveillance stage.When a targetappears, the
node which detects the target first reports the detected
information target_detected to its GH. Also, the GMs in
the same grid as it overhear this message instructing
them to stay active for detecting. When the detected
information reaches the GH which will stay active in the
nextperiods,itwillbesenttothesinkbytheotherGHs.
ThesinkwillinformalltheGHstochangetothetracking
stage. Since the detected information is forwarded only
by the GHs instead of involving all the nodes, this can
GridinL1
GridinL2
GridinL3
GridinL4
5 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
www.intechopen.com
save significantly on energy. Later, all the nodes will go
intothetrackingstage.Whenthetargetmovesoutofthe
sensing field, the sink will send the message no_target
to all the GHs. Then, all the nodes will go back to the
surveillance stage. The transition between the
surveillanceandthetrackingstageisshowninFig.4.

Figure4.Transitionbetweenthesurveillanceandthetracking
stage
For the surveillance stage, the sleep time of the GMs is
decided by the distance from the grid to the network
border, whereas for the tracking stage, the sleep time of
theGMsisdecided bythe both the distancebetweenthe
grid and the network border and the distance between
the grid and the target. Since the positionof the target is
not known by all the nodes, every CM should stay alert
and have a short sleep time
bord
t which should be the
sameasthatofthe border GMs, todetect thetarget. In a
centralized manner, the sink informs each node of the
targets location information so that the node can choose
apropersleeptimeaccordingtotheinformationreceived
from the sink. However, it results in a high
communication energy cost when the target moves. In
ourapproach,thelocalinformationisusedinsteadofthe
global information. Because the target is continuously
moving, the sleep time of each node must be adjusted
accordingly. When the target is in the nodes sensing
range,inordertowakeupintime,eachnodecanusethe
results of the motion detection from its neighbours in a
coordinated manner. Each node broadcasts its detected
information to its neighbours periodically. When the
current node decides if it should go to the sleep state, it
will use the detected information from its neighbours.
However,dueto the dense nodesin WSNs, the nodes in
anadjacentareahavethesimilardetectedinformation.If
every node broadcasts its detected information
periodically, it will result in more transmission energy
consumption and information redundancy. In our
approach,onlytheGHwhichdetectsatargetorreceives
the target information from its GMs broadcasts the
detected information to its neighbouring GHs. We
divided the grids into three parts: 1) the tracking grid,
which includes the target. The GMs in the grid is active
for detecting; 2) the neighbouring coordinated grid, the
GH of which can receive the detected information from
the GH of the tracking grid; 3) the guarding grid, which
isatthenetworkborderandalwaysstaysalert.
Detected information is broadcasted by the GH which
detectsatargetorreceivesthedetectedinformationfrom
its GMs. When a GH makes PM decisions, it just
considers the detected information from its immediate
neighbouring GHs (shown as Fig.5). If a GH does not
receive the detectedinformation, it can ascertain that the
distance from the target to itself is larger than the side
length of one grid . A GH calculates the sleep time for
its GMs in three different cases. The work process of the
GHsisshowninAlgorithm1.

ThefirstcaseisthattheGHneitherdetectsanytargetnor
receives any target information from the others during a
given time period. The maximum sleep time of the GMs
isdecidedbythefollowingequation,

trac
max
t
v

(10)
ThesecondcaseisthatthetargetisdetectedbytheGHor
its GMs. The GH remains active until the target moves
outofthesensingareaofitsgridanditdecidesthesleep
time of its GMs
trac
t = 0. Then the GH broadcasts a
detectedinformationmessagetoitsneighbouringGHsso
that they can prepare to track the target at the next
moment.

The third case is that the GH receives the target

information from its neighbours. Thus, the GH can
calculate the maximum sleep time for its GMs with the
followingequation,

bord
trac
max
R
t
v
(11)
Similarly, when
1 trac
Th t and
2 trac
Th t holds, the sleep
time of the GMs in the tracking stage can be set as
minimum {
trac
t ,
surv
t }, in which
surv
t is the sleep time of
the GMs in the surveillance stage, otherwise it is 0. Each
GH can decide if the sleep time of its GMs needs to be
changedbasedontheinformationitreceived.Whenthere
is a change to the sleep time value of GMs, the GH
informsitsGMsabouttheupdatedsleeptimeinthenext
active instant. The GMs receive a new sleep time from
theirGHandadjusttheircurrentsleepmodeadaptively.

Figure5.ThePMintrackingstage
GridinL1 GridinL2
(a) (b)
Gridhead Sensornode
Broadcastdetectedinformation Gridincludestarget
6 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
In this way, sensor nodes will get the target movement
information from the GHs in a neighbouring area and
accurately estimate the sleep state and time interval. In
addition, transmitting the target information only
among the GHs instead of among all the sensor nodes
can reduce the communication costs and information
redundancy.

1. (a)TheworkprocessofGHs
2. ifatargetisdetectedthen
3. informitsneighbouringGHs
4. informitsGMs
5. otherwiseifitreceives(targetinformation)fromitsGMs
then
6. informitsneighbouringGHs
7. otherwiseifitreceives(targetinformation)from
neighbouringGHsthen
8. tsleepCalculateSleepTime(targetinformation)
9. Broadcast(new_sleepTime)
10. endif
11.
12. (b)TheworkprocessofGMs
13. setTimer(ACTIVE_TIMEOUT,tactive)
14. ifatargetisdetectedthen
15. CancelTimer(ACTIVE_TIMEOUT)
16. otherwiseifitreceives(targetinformation)fromitsGHor
theGMsinthesamegridthen
17. CancelTimer(ACTIVE_TIMEOUT)
18. otherwiseifitreceives(new_sleepTime)fromitsGHthen
19. tsleepGetNewSleepTime(new_sleepTime)
20. endif
21. whileactivetimeexpiresdo
22. ChangeRadioStateTo(SLEEP)
23. setTimer(SLEEP_TIMEOUT,tsleep)
24. endwhile
25. whilesleeptimeexpiresdo
26. ChangeRadioStateTo(ACTIVE)
27. endwhile
Algorithm1.TheCoordinatedPMintrackingstage
E.Hierarchicalstructure
If the whole sensing area is relatively big, when a
target enters into the sensing area from one network
border, if all the sensor nodes change to the tracking
sleep policy, a lot of energy will be wasted, which is
not necessary since the nodes are far from the target.
For this case, we propose a hierarchical structure as
Fig.6 and Fig.7 shows. When the sink receives the
message that the target is detected for the first time,
the sink informs all the GHs of the position of the
target and the subareas information. The whole
sensing area is divided into several subareas. Each
GH calculates the sleep time for its GMs according to
the subarea it is in. The tracking subarea uses the
sleep policy of the tracking stage, whereas the
surveillance subarea still adopts the sleep policy of
the surveillance stage. This means that the nodes
which are far from the target can still maintain the
surveillancestatetosavemoreenergy.

Figure6.Hierarchicalstructure

Figure7.Hierarchicalstructure
We assume the size of the network is MM. Thus, the
numberofgridsononesideofthenetworkborderis,

M
K

(12)
Forthesimplicityoftheanalysis,weassumeK=2
i
,(i=1,2,
3) so that the network can be divided effectively, as in
Fig.9. In the surveillance subarea, the summation of the
sleeptimeofalltheGMsis,

l
L
s _ FG s _IG
surv C sleep C
sleep
l 2
t (8L 4)N t [(L l 1) 8 4]N t

(13)
whereNCistheaveragenumberoftheGMsineachgrid,
andListhenumberofthegridsfromthesubareaborder
tothecanter.
s _ FG
sleep
t and
l
s _ IG
sleep
t arethesleeptimeofthesub
area border GMs and the llayer interior GMs,
respectively.

By combining Equations (8), (10) and (11), Equation (13)

isrewrittenas,

L
bord
surv C C
l 2 max
bord
C
max
3 2
C
max max
(l 1)
t (8L 4)N [(L l)8 4]N
v
N (8L 4)
R
v
R 4 2
N ( L 2L L)
v v 3 3

(14)
Dueto
g
L
K
2
(g=2,3G),whereGisthegradesbywhich
thenetworkisdivided,therefore,
7 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
www.intechopen.com

bord
surv C
g
max
3 2
C
3g 2g g
max
t N (8 4)
R K
v
2
4 K K 2 K
N ( 2 )
v 3 3
2 2 2

(15)
Moreover,inthetrackingsubarea,thesummationofthe
sleeptimeofalltheGMsis,

L
s _ FG
C sleep
l 2
bord
C
tk
trac C sleep t
max
2
C t t
max
t (8L 4)N t [(L l)8 4 N ]
(8L 4)N
N t
R

v
N (4L (8 N )L 4 N )
v

(16)
where Nt is the number of nodes which are active and
trackingatarget.Inthetrackingsubarea,
G
L K / 2

bord
C trac
G
max
2
C t t
2G G
max
t (8 4)N
R K
v
2
K K
N [4 (8 N ) 4 N ]
v
2 2

(17)
Therefore,thetotalsleeptimeofthenetworkis,

C
G
sum surv
g 2
3 2 G
C
bord
g 3g 2g g
g 2 max
2
C t t
2G G
max
bord
G
max

8
( 4)N
trac
t 3t
3N 8K 2K 3K K
[R ( 4) ( )]
v
2 2 2 2
4K K
N [ (8 N ) 4 N ]
v
2 2
R K

v
2
t
2
3

(18)
Afterfurthercalculation,wecanobtain,

C
sum
G
max
3 C C
t
G 1
max max
2 t
G 1 G
bord
t
N R 16
(K(12 ) 8 12G)
v
2
N N 1 1
(N 4) [ K (1 )
v v 14
8
10 N 1 3
K ( 1) K(1 )]
2
4 2

(19)
Therefore,theaverageenergysavedbyGMssleepingis,

1 2
i s sum
s s d s u
2 tr tr
C
(P P )t
E (P P ) (P P )
K N

(20)
If the target moves out of a tracking subarea, the sink
will inform the GHs in the tracking subarea to change
into the surveillance state and inform the surveillance
subarea where the target moves into transit to the
tracking state. In this way, the average energy
consumption of the state transition of the tracking and
surveillancesubareais,

sum
2
br re C re
t
2 G 2
C max C
t
(
K (E 8E N E ) K
E / )
K N v 2 K N

(21)
Combining Equations (33), (34) and (35), when the
parameters and application scenario is determinate, we
canobtainthenetenergysavingis,

s t
E E f(K,G) (22)
AccordingtoEquation(36),therelationof(Es,Et)and(K,
G) can be drawn as in Fig.8. We can choose G based on
theoptimalenergysaving.

We also further prove our results in an intuitionistic

manner. As Fig.9 shows, when K=8, the energy
consumption is optimal if the hierarchical grade G is 1,
however, if G=2, the number of grids the members of
whichareinL1isincreasedsothatthetotalsleeptimeof
theGMsisdecreased.

Figure8.TherelationofKandG

Figure9.HierarchicalstructurewhenK=8
F.GridMaintenance
To avoid that a GH overfull consumes energy, if the
energy of any GH is lower than a threshold Te, the GH
will broadcast a message reqreplace to its GMs. Then
the nodes in the same grid reselect the GH. A node with
moreremainingenergyisselectedtobecomeanewGH.

The pseudo code of the GH selection is shown in

Algorithm 2. When a GM receives the reqreplace
message, it waits a random time to broadcast the
finish_election message to compete the GH election.
Each GMs residual energy
i
residual
E is converted to a
waiting time
i
T (line 4). More residual energy leads to a
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
-0.2
-0.15
-0.1
-0.05
0
0.05
0.1
0.15
0.2
0.25
0.3
G
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

E
n
e
r
g
y

S
a
v
in
g
k=8
k=16
k=32
GridinL1 GridinL2
(a) (b)
Gridincludestarget
8 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
shorter
i
T . Therefore, the GM with the most
i
residual
E
waits for the shortest time before sending the
finish_election message to others. Therefore, it can be
selectedastheGH.(Line8and12).Theothernodesstop
waiting and give up the GH election as soon as they
receive the message.
i
T is calculated by the following
equation:

i
residual
i min max min ran
i
initial
E
T T (T T )(1 ) R(T )
E
(23)
whereTminandTmaxaretwodesignparameters,whichare
used to control the waiting time in a reasonable range.
i
residual
E and
i
initial
E are the residual and initial energy,
respectively, of the node.
i
residual
E is divided by
i
initial
E in
ordertoavoidasituationofanodewaitingfortoomuch
time when its residual energy becomes very low. Two
nodes might have the same residual energy and
communication costs and therefore have the same
i
T . To
avoid this a random time R(Tran) is added. R(Tran) is a
discreterandom variablewith uniform distribution in [0,
Tran],whichisanorderofmagnitudesmallerthanTmax.In
thispaperwesetTmin,TmaxandTrantobe10
4
seconds,10
2

seconds,and10
5
seconds,respectively.

1. while(afterinitiatingorreceivedreqreplace)
2. do
3. nodeNisetatimer
4.
i
T CalculateWaitTime(
i
residual
E )
5. Wait(
i
T )
6. ifwaittimeexpired
7. Broadcast(finish_election)
8. selectNiasGH
9. endif
10. ifreceived(finish_electionfromNj)
11. cancelwait()
12. selectNjasGH
13. endif
14. endif
15. endwhile
Algorithm2.SelectingGHinonegrid
If the GH election fails, perhaps due to the loss of the
broadcasted messages, the old GH will continue its role
andbroadcastthereelectionrequestperiodically.Forthe
purposesofreliability,whenaGMfailstosenddatatoits
GHseveraltimes(e.g.aGHdiessuddenly),itwillsenda
GHreelectionrequesttotheGMs.
5.Simulationsandanalysis
A.ExperimentEnvironment
Inthissection,weevaluatetheperformanceofHCPMin
different network conditions and compare it to the state
oftheartapproachesusingasimulation,whichiscarried
out on Castalia based on OMNet++4.1 [20]. Castalia is a
simulator for WSNs and generally networks of low
power embedded devices. It provides realistic and
accurate wireless channels and radio models so that the
simulationresultsaremeaningful.

Parametersvalues
Fieldsize400m400m
Numberofnodes1600
Gridsize50m50m
Numberofgrids64
Sensingrange15m
Transmissionrange150m
Datareportingfrequencyevery0.5s
Datapacketsize128bytes
Controlmessagesize8bytes
Velocityofthetarget10m/s
Locationofsink(200,200)
FG
sense
R 25m
ActiveintervalsofGMs0.2s
Simulationtime600s
Table1.SimulationParameters
In default scenarios, the simulation parameters used are
shown in TABLE I. The transmission, reception, idle and
sleep power consumption of sensor nodes, based on the
real radio model of Texas Instruments CC1000, are 44.4
mW, 22.2 mW, 22.2 mW and 0.0006 mW, respectively,
and the transition costs and delay between the sensor
nodes states is shown in TABLE II [20], where the cost
anddelaytimetoswitchfromcolumnstatetorowstateis
given. The grid size is set to 50 m to make sure its less
than
t
2 2 R / . We set Te = 1/3EGH, i.e., the GHs are
changedperiodicallywhentheGHsconsume1/3oftheir
energy, and EGH is the energy of the node when it is
selectedasGH.Thebandwidthofthewirelesschannelis
250 kbps. For statistical confidence, we executed each
experiment at least five times with a different random
distributionandeachresultisaveragedovertheseruns.

To compare the performance of HCPM with other

schedules, we used the other three stateoftheart
approaches in the experiments, namely (1) no PM
approach (nodes are always on), (2) local PM approach
(all the nodes sleep periodically if they have not
detectedanyeventin0.5sandthefixedsleeptimeisset
as 1.5s), (3) and the adaptive coordinate PM approach
(cf. Section III). The main performance metrics include
the average energy consumption and the average
delivery transmission delay. The average energy
consumptionisdefinedastheratioofthesummationof
energy consumption to the number of the nodes in the
network. This metric indicates the energy efficiency of
the PM approach. The average delivery delay indicates
howquicklythesinkcanobtainreportsfromthesource.
In order to examine the scalability of HCPM and study
the impact of certain parameters, we also simulated
different network sizes and different velocities of the
target.
9 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
www.intechopen.com
Nodestate Active(Tx) Idle(Rx) Sleep
Active(Tx) / 22.2/0.01 22.2/0.2
Idle(Rx) 22.2/0.01 / 22.2/0.2
Sleep 0.5/0.05 0.5/0.05 /
Table2.Transitionpoweranddelay(mW/ms)
B.SimulationResults
Fig. 10 shows how the average energy consumption
changeswithsimulationtimedependingontheapproach
in the surveillance stage. It can be seen that the HCPM
approach can save about 55% to 50% more energy
comparedtothe local PM andcoordinatedPMapproach
in the surveillance stage. HCPM can obtain the best
energyefficiencybecauseonlynetworkbordernodesand
GHs stay alert, whereas lots of interior nodes can sleep
foralongperiodinordertosaveenergywhenthereisno
targetinthesensingarea.InlocalPM,allthenodeshave
a fixed sleep schedule, the energy consumption depends
on the active and sleep intervals set by the user. If the
nodeshavealongersleeptime,moreenergyissavedbut
itbringslongertransmissiondelaysandmoretargetsare
missed. Coordinated PM consumes less energy than that
inlocalPMbecauseeachnodeknowsthereisnotargetin
its and its neighbours sensing range by communicating
withitsneighbourstomakenodessleepmore.

Figure10.Averageenergyconsumptioninsurveillancestage
Next, we assume the target enters the field at a random
location and moves continuously and randomly in the
sensing field with a maximum speed of 10 m/s. Fig. 11
shows the average energy comparison of the three
approaches. We can see that the coordinated PM
approach consumes more energy than HCPM due to the
greatercommunicationcostsamongneighbouringnodes.
The energy consumption of coordinated PM increases
quickly,somuchsothatitexceedsthatoflocalPMinthe
trackingstage,becausewhenanodereceivesinformation
about the detection of a target from its neighbour, it will
remainactivetopreparefordetectioninthenextinstant.
The local PM approach also has a higher energy
consumption because the nodes far from the target have
thesamesleepscheduleasthenodesclosetothetargetin
the fixed schedule scheme. However our HCPM
approach consumes the least energy because of its
adaptive sleep time which allows the nodes far from the
target to sleep longer and means there are only
communication cost among the GHs. It can be seen that
HCPMsavesabout30%and35%moreenergycompared
to the local PM and coordinate PM approach in the
trackingstage.

Figure11.Averageenergyconsumptionintrackingstage

Figure12.Averagetimepercentageofnodesintrackingstage
Fig. 12 shows the average percentage of time that each
nodeisinthesleepandactivestateinthetrackingstage.
InthenoPMnetwork,thenodesareneverinsleepmode,
also the nodes are more often inefficiently in the active
mode(i.e.thenodesareinactivemodeanddonotdetect
any target), but at the same time detect more target
movement and little is missed. With coordinated PM,
nodesareinsleepmodeless;61.7%ofthetime,compared
with70.2%and82.6%ofthetimeinsleepmodewithlocal
PMandHCPM,respectively,becauseanodedoesnotgo
to sleep when its neighbour detects a target. If a nodes
neighbourdetectsatargetinthecurrenttimeinstant,the
node has a high probability of detecting the target in the
next time instant. Therefore, nodes with coordinated PM
miss less target movement. Of these approaches, the
nodes with local PM miss the most target movements
because the node does not know the information of the
target movement and just makes PM decisions by itself.
HCPM has better performance with regards to energy
efficiency and missing targets because each node has an
adaptive sleep interval according to the target
information.

To localize the target, some existing localization

algorithms such as [18] can be used. Since these
localizationalgorithmsneedthreetofivesensedpiecesof
datatodecidethepositionofthetarget,itisreasonableto
supposethesinkcanlocalizethetargetifitreceivesfives
piecesofsenseddata.Therefore,thetrackingerrorinthis
paper is defined as the percentage of time when the
number of pieces of sensed data received by the sink is
less than a threshold of five. The simulation results are
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Simulation time (s)
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
n
e
r
g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Simulation time (s)
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
n
e
r
g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Sleep mode Active and
not detecting
target
Sleep mode
and missing
target
Active and
detecting
target
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

t
i
m
e

p
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
10 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
shown in Fig. 13. HCPM has the lowest tracking error
because the sensor nodes are woken before the target
comes.

Figure13.Trackingerrorindifferentapproaches
Fig.14combinesthesurveillanceandtrackingstagesand
shows the average energy consumption when the
frequencyofthetargetsappearancechangesafter900sof
simulation time. We can see the energy consumption of
the nodes with no PM and coordinated PM decreases
slightly as the frequency decreases because the data
reportdecreaseswhenthefrequencydecreases.Whenthe
frequencyislower,coordinatedPMperformsbetterthan
local PM because the nodes with coordinated PM have
moresleeptime.InHCPM,theperformanceatthehigher
frequency is almost the same as in the tracking stage
becausethenetworkisalwaysintrackingstageandthere
is not enough time to transfer between the surveillance
and tracking stages. The energy consumption in HCPM
decreasesasthefrequencydecreases.

Figure14.Energyconsumptionvs.thetimepercentageoftarget
appearance
The network lifetime of the four approaches in the
surveillance and tracking stages is compared in Fig.15
and Fig. 16, respectively. We assume that each node has
aninitialenergyof10joules.Inthesefigures,wepresent
acomparisonofnetworklifetimefordifferentdefinitions.
As shown, HCPM can significantly prolong the network
lifetimeinallcases.Forexample,iftheendofthelifetime
is defined as the time by which 20% of the nodes have
died, HCPM achieves lifetime extensions of 57.3% and
32.1% compared to local PM and coordinated PM in the
surveillance stage, and 12.8% and 27.9% in the tracking
stage, respectively. Similar lifetime extensions are
achieved for the other cases. The main reasons for the
large lifetime extension are three folds: 1) HCPM adopts
anadaptivesleeptimeforGMsandtheGMsfarfromthe
target have a long term sleep time; 2) the transmitting
costs of the detected information are reduced since the
information is transmitted only among the GHs; 3) the
energy consumption between the border and the interior
nodesarebalancedbecausetheinteriornodeshavemore
sleep time in the surveillancestage and theyalways take
morerelaytasksinthetrackingstage.

Figure15.Lifetimeinthesurveillancestage

Figure16.Lifetimeinthetrackingstage
C.PerformancewiththeImpactofHierarchicalgrades
Fig.17 shows that the average energy consumed in
different hierarchical grades in the tracking stage in
HCPM. The simulation results are consistent with the
theoretical analysis in section IV. Therefore, hierarchical
PM can be applied in the target tracking stage according
tothenetworksizetoreducetheenergyconsumption.

Figure17.Averageenergyconsumptionindifferenthierarchical
grades
D.PerformancewiththeImpactofDifferentNodeDensity
Wefurtherinvestigatedtheperformanceofourapproach
asthenumberofnodesincreaseswhilekeepingtheother
parametersconstant.Thenumberofnodesisvariedfrom
800to4800nodes.Fig.18and19showtheaverageenergy
consumption in the surveillance and tracking stages,
respectively. HCPM consumes significantly less energy
compared to the other approaches and the average
energy consumption decreases with theincreasingnodes
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
No PM Local PM Coordinated
PM
HCPM
T
r
a
c
k
i
n
g

e
r
r
o
r
0
10
20
30
40
50
100% 50% 30% 10%
Average time percentage of the target appearance
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
n
e
r
g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0
300
600
900
1200
1500
1800
1 node 10% 20% 30%
Node dies
S
i
m
u
l
a
t
i
o
n

t
i
m
e

(
s
)
No PM Local PM Coordinated PM HCPM
0
300
600
900
1 node 10% 20% 30%
Node dies
S
i
m
u
l
a
t
i
o
n

t
i
m
e

(
s
)
No PM Local PM Coordinated PM HCPM
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1 2 3 4 5 6
Hierarchical grades
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
n
e
r
g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
K=8
K=16
K=32
11 Feng Juan, Baowang Lian and Zhao Hongwei: Hierarchically Coordinated Power
Management for Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Networks
www.intechopen.com
as shown in Fig. 18 and 19, because only one GH is
alwaysawakeineachgridinHCPM.Whennodedensity
increases,moresensornodescangointolongtermsleep
bothinthesurveillanceandtrackingstage,whichleadsto
further energy saving. We can see from the trend that
higher node density can help extend network lifetime.
The average energy consumption of nodes with no PM
almost has no changes as node density increases in both
thesurveillanceandtrackingstage,becauseeverynodeis
alwaysawake.Similarly,inthelocalPMapproach,every
node has a fixed sleep schedule so that the energy
consumption does not change with the number of the
nodes. In the coordinated PM approach, the average
energyconsumptionrisesslightlywhenthenodedensity
increases,becauseanodesneighboursincreasewhenthe
number of nodes increases so that the communication
costsbetweenthenodesandtheirneighboursincreases.

Figure18.Averageenergyconsumptionvs.numberofnodesin
thesurveillancestage

Figure19.Averageenergyconsumptionvs.thenumberofnodes
inthetrackingstage
Fig.20showsthattheaveragetransmissiondelaychanges
withthenumberofsensornodes.Iftheotherparameters
arefixed,theaveragedelayincreaseswhennodedensity
increases.Morenodeswillbeawakeanddetectthetarget
at a higher density, which may create more data packets
andhenceincreasethedeliverydelay.Anetworkwithno
PM achieves lower delays compared to the other
approachesforallnodedensities.ThedelayoflocalPMis
the largest among these approaches because the nodes
haveafixedsleepscheduleandthenodesdecidewhether
to go to sleep by themselves so that the nodes have to
wait for their relay nodes wake to send data when it has
senseddata.ThedelayofcoordinatedPMisshorterthan
that in local PM because nodes will receive detected
informationfromitsneighboursinadvancesoastowake
upintimeforthetasksofdetectingandrelaying.HCPM
performs better than local and coordinated PM
approachesbecausetheGHsalwaysremainactiveforthe
transmission of sensed data.Onthe other hand,the GHs
can perform data aggregation to reduce the number of
transmissionpackets.

Figure20.Averagetransmissiondelayvs.thenumberofnodes
inthetrackingstage

Figure21.Trackingerrorvs.thenumberofnodes
Fig.21 shows how the tracking error changes with the
numberofthesensornodes.Wecanseethatthetracking
performance is improved as the sensor nodes increase
because more nodes detect the target at a higher node
density. However, when the number of nodes is big
enough, increasing node density does not improve the
trackingperformance.Inversely,overfullnodescancause
a lot of data collision which reduces the tracking
performance.
E.PerformancewiththeImpactofDifferentTargetVelocity
In order to explore how target velocity impacts on the
performanceofHCPM,wealsovariedthetargetvelocity
between5m/sand30m/sandfixedtheotherparameters.
Fig. 22 shows theaverage energy consumptionwhen the
targetvelocityischanging.

Figure22.Averageenergyconsumptionvs.thevelocityofthe
target
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
800 1600 2400 3200 4000 4800
Number of the nodes
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
n
e
r
g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
800 1600 2400 3200 4000 4800
Number of the nodes
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

e
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g
y

c
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n

(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0
0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.7
0.8
800 1600 2400 3200 4000 4800
Number of the nodes
A
v
e
r
a
g
e

t
r
a
n
s
m
i
s
s
i
o
n

d
e
l
a
y

(
s
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
800 1600 2400 3200 4000 4800
Number of the nodes
T
r
a
c
k
i
n
g

e
r
r
o
r
No PM Local PM Coordinated PM HCPM
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
5 10 15 20 25 30
Maximum velocity of the target (m/s)
A
v
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e

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o
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s
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m
p
t
i
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(
J
)
No PM
Local PM
Coordinated PM
HCPM
12 Int. j. adv. robot. syst., 2013, Vol. 10, 347:2013 www.intechopen.com
The average energy consumption in the network with no
PMishardlyaffectedbythetargetvelocity,becausenodes
sleep schedules are not changed. In the other three
approaches, the average energy consumption is
proportionaltothevelocityofthetarget,becausethesleep
time of the node decreases when the target moves faster.
HCPM always outperforms the local and coordinated PM
approachesforallthevariedtargetvelocities.

Fig. 23 shows how the average transmission delay

changes with the target velocity. For the no PM and
HCPMapproach,thetransmissiondelaydoesnotchange
with varied target velocity, because there are always
nodes in active mode to transmit data in a no PM
network and the GHs also remain active with the
responsibility for data delivery in the HCPM network.
The delay is longer in HCPM than that in no PM
approach because one GH is responsible for the data
delivery of multiple GMs, whereas the data can be
transmittedalongadifferentpathbyanynodeinnoPM.
The delay is shorter in HCPM than that in local and
coordinatedPMbecausetheGHsalwaysremainactiveto
transmitdata.

Figure23.Averagetransmissiondelayvs.thevelocityofthe
target

Figure24.Trackingerrorvs.thevelocityofthetarget
Fig.24 shows how the tracking error changes with the
target velocity. If the target velocity increases, the nodes
inLocalandCoordinatedPMdonothaveenoughtimeto
be woken so the tracking error increases. However, the
nodes in HCPM can adjust their sleep time adaptively
and then HCPM almost has a stable performance in
highertargetvelocitytracking.
6.Conclusions
This paper proposed a novel hierarchically coordinated
power management (HCPM) approach for tracking
targets in WSNs. It can reduce energy consumption and
increase the network lifetime without degrading the
tracking performance. HCPM outperforms the other PM
approaches by allowing more nodes to sleep in the
surveillance state and tracks the target by dynamically
changing the schedule in the tracking state. GHs utilized
the information sensed bothlocallyand byneighbouring
GHs to optimze the sleep time of their GMs. Moreover,
our approach maintains a good balance between energy
saving and data delivery so that the transmission delay
can be reduced. Simulation results proved that our
HCPM method performs better than the stateoftheart
approaches, the local PM and adaptive coordinated PM
approach, for target tracking in terms of energy
consumptionanddatatransmissiondelay.
7.Acknowledgments
This work was supported by NPU Foundation for
FundamentalResearch(NPUFFRJCY20130135).
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