Heterogeneous sensing for target tracking: architecture, techniques, applications and challenges

Target-tracking applications are promising and possess great theoretical and practical significance, though the research faces great challenges. With the development of multi-modal depth-sensing technology, a large number of scholars have proposed various target-tracking methods based on heterogeneous sensing and demonstrated great results. This review provides an overview of the techniques involved in target tracking in the different layers of the network as well as a comprehensive analysis of the research progress in heterogeneous sensing techniques in each layer. First, this review introduces the single sensing scheme and heterogeneous sensing scheme in the physical layer. Second, we present the heterogeneous communication technologies and heterogeneous optimization methods for communication protocols in the network layer. Third, we combine several typical heterogeneous-sensor target-tracking applications and analyze the applications of cloud computing, edge computing, big data and blockchain technologies. Finally, we discuss the challenges and future direction of heterogeneous-sensor target-tracking methods.