On optimal communication cost for gathering correlated data through wireless sensor networks

In many energy-constrained wireless sensor networks, nodes cooperatively forward correlated sensed data to data sinks. In order to reduce the communication cost (e.g. overall energy) used for data collection, previous works have focused on specific coding schemes, such as Slepian-Wolf Code or Explicit Entropy Code. However, the minimum communication cost under arbitrary coding/routing schemes has not yet been characterized. In this paper, we consider the problem of minimizing the total communication cost of a wireless sensor network with a single sink. We prove that the minimum communication cost can be achieved using SlepianWolf Code and Commodity Flow Routing when the link communication cost is a convex function of link data rate. Furthermore, we find it useful to introduce a new metric distance entropy, a generalization of entropy, to characterize the data collection limit of networked sources. When the energy consumption is proportional to the link data rate (e.g. normally in 80...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: MOBICOM
• Authors: Junning Liu, Micah Adler, Donald F. Towsley, Chun Zhang
• Keywords: Communication Cost, Distance Entropy, Minimum Communication Cost, MOBICOM 2006