Enhancing the spatial resolution of presence detection in a PIR based wireless surveillance network

Abstract

Pyroelectric sensors are low-cost, low-power small components commonly used only to trigger alarm in presence of humans or moving objects. However, the use of an array of pyroelectric sensors can lead to extraction of more features such as direction of movements, speed, number of people and other characteristics. In this work a low-cost pyroelectric infrared sensor based wireless network is set up to be used for tracking people motion. A novel technique is proposed to distinguish the direction of movement and the number of people passing. The approach has low computational requirements, therefore it is well-suited to limited-resources devices such as wireless nodes. Tests performed gave promising results.