Wireless Sensor Networks for Battlefield Surveillance

In this position paper, we investigate the use of wireless sensor network (WSN) technology for ground surveillance. The goal of our project is to develop a prototype of WSN for outdoor deployment. We aim to design a system, which can detect and classify multiple targets (e.g., vehicles and troop movements), using inexpensive off-the-shelf wireless sensor devices, capable of sensing acoustic and magnetic signals generated by different target objects. In order to archive our goals, we intend to design a system, which is capable of automatic selforganization and calibration. Such a system would need to be capable of performing detection and tracking of targets as well as sending the real time enemy mobility information to a command centre. Real-time tacking with WSN is extremely challenging since it requires high system robustness, real time decision making, high frequency sampling, multi-modality of sensing, complex signal processing and data fusion, distributed coordination and wide area coverage. We propose a Hybrid Sensor Network architecture (HSN), tailored specifically to meet these challenges. We investigate data fusion technologies such as particle filters, to handle both environmental and sensing noises of inexpensive sensors.