SenSearch: GPS and Witness Assisted Tracking for Delay Tolerant Sensor Networks

摘要

This paper describes the design, implementation and performance evaluation of SenSearch, an outdoors, GPS assisted personnel tracking system using MICA motes. SenSearch is a mobile wireless ad-hoc network comprised of sensor nodes worn by users. These nodes store and forward information about the location of other nodes in an environment that lacks communication infrastructure. A key feature of SenSearch is that it does not require a continuously connected network for its operation. It is designed for a delay tolerant network that provides only occasional connectivity between nodes. It uses the distributed storage available through multiple nodes and the mobility provided by users to propagate the history of nodes' GPS locations to the processing center. The main contribution of this paper is an extensive, experimental evaluation of the system under controlled as well as uncontrolled environments. The paper discusses in detail the effects of a number of experimental parameters on the performance of the system.