In order to meet the requirements of tracking performance and to balance the node energy consumption in wireless sensor networks ( WSNs),an energy model based on the hardware over wireless sensor node and the time sequence procedure is established. In the process of node communication,a quantization algorithm is employed to compress the transmitted data,on the basis of which a scheduling algorithm with energy optimization strategy is proposed by synthetically taking into consideration the tracking accuracy and the residual energy of nodes. Moreover,a
double wake-up /sleep mechanism is adopted to prolong the network lifetime. The proposed scheme is easy to implement in resource-limited nodes due to the adoption of distributed computing mode. Experimental results demonstrate that the test platform effectively tracks moving targets in WSNs. Simulated results show that the energy optimization strategy effectively balances the energy consumption among nodes and prevents nodes from depleting prematurely.