Abstract
An important application of wireless sensor networks is tracking moving objects. Prediction-based techniques have been proposed to reduce the power consumption in wireless sensor networks by limiting the sensor active time. This paper proposes a quantitative method to optimize the power efficiency by analyzing the effect of prediction on the energy consumption in such networks. To our best knowledge, our efforts are the first attempt made to calculate the optimal tracking interval for a given predictive tracking algorithm. Based on this method, the lifetime and power efficiency of a sensor network can be effectively improved.