Chinese Journal of Computers   Full Text
Title	QoS Framework Design for WSN-Based Tracking of Moving Targets
Authors	YU Jing WANG Zhi-Bo LUO Ji-An SUN Xi-Ce WANG Zhi
Address	(State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027)
Year	2009
Issue	No.3(441—462)
Abstract &   Background	Abstract As an important resource reservation control mechanism for networks with insufficient capacity, the guarantee of relevant Quality of Service Indicators plays an essential role in both enhancing network performance and prolonging its effective lifetime. Nevertheless, the WSN-specific QoS framework is fundamentally difficult to formulate due to its application-driven nature signifying the fact that QoS requirements vary enormously with different tasks assigned to WSN. Hence, this paper proposes and analyzes the QoS framework for WSN under the specific scenario of tracking moving targets. Existing literature address mostly how to increase the localization and prediction accuracy while determining the positions of different detected targets before making special tracking strategies. However, the unbalance of the overemphasis on accuracy and the overlook of other equally central QoS requirements such as latency can be exparte and devastating for high-order systems with complex dynamics. Therefore, according to the information flow characteristics along the tracking task, the authors divided the task into four consecutive modules, namely sensor deployment, sensor selection, data transmission and distributed collaborative algorithms; and on the whole, and considered three high-level user abstractions of QoS indicators in tracking: accuracy, latency and network lifetime. Further, they seeked to break down those high-level abstractions into each module wherein they propose several related lower-level QoS indicators as well as their supporting technologies and existing protocols to assist the understanding of both general and specific design and evaluation of QoS framework for WSN. Moreover, the authors demonstrate from the global QoS point of view how to guarantee the global QoS by employing feedback control and cross-layer design concepts. Keywords quality of service; wireless sensor networks; accuracy; latency; network lifetime; target tracking Background As a key enabler, Quality of Service (QoS) provides a feasible mechanism to enhance the overall network performance and prolong the lifetime by eliminating communication overload in terms of restricted resource in sorts of networks. But up till now, there is no uniform QoS framework available for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in that diverse application scenarios should be taken into consideration at first and call for different metrics for system design. It’s more meaningful to propose the tailored QoS framework in compliance with individual and critical applications within WSN, together with ubiquitous significance. This paper addresses the QoS framework design problem based on mobile target tracking application in WSN. As a typical scenario, it not only focuses on the detection accuracy and the time delay of target location/speed vectors, but also pays attention to prolonging the network lifetime in stable and extended manner. By realizing that QoS breakdown into protocol stack calls for isolated drawbacks, we integrate the analysis in sequence of consecutive information flow in mobile target tracking application and elaborate on how to fulfill the system QoS requirement by implementing sensor deployment, data transmission, collaboratively distributed detection and prediction strategies. Instead of summarizing the research outcome only, we also propose the QoS design stack in terms of application driven metrics and ubiquitous significance. Some systematic support protocols and architectures are covered to make all functional modules and QoS measurements facile in our paper to follow. Combining with our latest progress, the optimization problems and implementation issues are under discussion and presented as the future directions. This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant No.60434030, No.60773181 and No.60873223, the National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program) of China under grant No.2006AA01Z218. The Collaborative Sensing and Networking Group of State Key Lab of Industrial Control Technology in Zhejiang Univ. have been making unremitting progress on theoretical and practical researches on Wireless Sensor Networks and Industrial Wireless Networks. 20+papers are published in journals and conferences that SCI or EI indexed per year. 10+academic symposiums are held per year with University of Wisconsin-Madison, California Institute of Technology, INRIA-LORIA, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Simon Fraser University and Hanyang University. We also established long-term cooperation with Siemens and Huawei.