The Problem of Sensor Network Control Based on Randomized and Multi-Agent Approaches and Its Applications

Tracking multiple targets is a classic signal processing problem that occurs in many applications such as air, maritime and traffic control. Autonomous sensor networks serve as desirable platforms for multipurpose tracking due to their redundancy and reconfigurability. However, the network implementation makes it impossible to use the classical centralized approaches to filtering, since each sensor has limited computing power and limited access to the measurements of other sensors. In addition to topological limitations (each sensor can only communicate with several neighboring network nodes), communication between sensors can be limited, for example, due to limited bandwidth of communication channels, delay and data distortion. This article proposes a new algorithm for distributed tracking of multiple targets in a sensor network, which is a combination of the SPSA algorithm and the local voting protocol. The algorithm is consolidated under conditions of unknown but limited noise, the algorithm step size is optimized, and simulation is carried out to confirm the algorithm’s performance. Possible applications for the algorithm are also described.