This thesis investigates the problem of detecting an intruder in the presence of clutter in a Passive Infra-Red (PIR) based Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). As one of the major objectives in a WSN is to maximize battery life, data transmission and local computations must be kept to a minimum as they are expensive in terms of energy. But, as intrusion being a rare event and cannot be missed, local computations expend more energy than data transmission. Hence, the need for a low-complexity algorithm for intrusion detection is inevitable. A low-complexity algorithm for intrusion detection in the presence of clutter arising from wind-blown vegetation, using PIR sensors is presented. The algorithm is based on a combination of Haar Transform (HT) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) based training. The amplitude and frequency of the intruder signature is used to differentiate it from the clutter signal. The HT was preferred to Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) in computing the spectral signature because of its computational simplicity -just additions and subtractions suffice (scaling coefficients taken care appropriately). Intruder data collected in a laboratory and clutter data collected from various types of vegetation were fed into SVM for training. The optimal decision rule returned by SVM was then used to separate intruder from clutter. Simulation results along with some representative samples in which intrusions were detected and the clutter being rejected by the algorithm is presented. The implementation of the proposed intruder-detection algorithm in a network setting comprising of 20 sensing nodes is discussed. The field testing performance of the algorithm is then discussed. The limitations of the algorithm is also discussed. A closed-form analytical expression for the signature generated by a human moving along a straight line in the vicinity of the PIR sensor at constant velocity is provided. It is shown to be a good approximation by showing a close match with the real intruder waveforms. It is then shown how this expression can be exploited to track the intruder from the signatures of three well-positioned sensing nodes.