We study the problem of energy-efficient target tracking in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs). Since sensors of UWSNs are battery-powered, it is impracticable to replace the batteries when exhausted. This means that the battery life affects the lifetime of the whole network. In order to extend the network lifetime, it is worth reducing the energy consumption on the premise of sufficient tracking accuracy. This paper proposes an energy-efficient filter that implements the tradeoff between communication cost and tracking accuracy. Under the distributed fusion framework, local sensors should not send their weak information to the fusion center if their measurement residuals are smaller than the pre-given threshold. In order to guarantee the target tracking accuracy, artificial measurements are generated to compensate for those unsent real measurements. Then, an adaptive scheme is derived to take full advantages of the artificial measurements-based filter in terms of energy-efficiency. Furthermore, a computationally efficient optimal sensor selection scheme is proposed to improve tracking accuracy on the premise of employing the same number of sensors. Simulation demonstrates that our scheme has superior advantages in the tradeoff between communication cost and tracking accuracy. It saves much energy while loosing little tracking accuracy or improves tracking performance with less additional energy cost.
