Three dimensional target tracking via Underwater Acoustic Wireless Sensor Network

Target tracking is one of the most important applications of Underwater Acoustic Wireless Sensor Networks (UAWSN). However, due to the use of sound waves for communication and existence of uncertainty in the system dynamics and measurements, it becomes difficult to obtain the exact path of the target. This paper proposes three-dimensional target tracking algorithms via UAWSN. Some challenges such as system and sensor uncertainties and limited energy source are studied in this paper. By applying the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) and Unscented Kalman Filter (UKF), the measurement noise is filtered and the target path is estimated. For comparison, the target path is also estimated by geometric approach. As the simulation results illustrate, the filtered path matches on the target's real path curve. Also, this paper uses a scheme to reduce energy consumption of the network for target tracking in UAWSN, called sensor selection.