Effect of Retransmission and Retrodiction on Estimation and Fusion in Long-Haul Sensor Networks

—In a long-haul sensor network, sensors are remotely deployed over a large geographical area to perform certain tasks, such as target tracking. In this work, we study the scenario where sensors take measurements of one or more dynamic targets and send state estimates of the targets to a fusion center via satellite links. The severe loss and delay inherent over the satellite channels reduce the number of estimates successfully arriving at the fusion center, thereby limiting the potential fusion gain and resulting in suboptimal accuracy performance of the fused estimates. In addition, the errors in target-sensor data association can also degrade the estimation performance. To mitigate the effect of imperfect communications on state estimation and fusion, we consider retransmission and retrodiction. The system adopts certain retransmission-based transport protocols so that lost messages can be recovered over time. Besides, retrodiction/smoothing techniques are applied so that the chance...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: TON
• Authors: Qiang Liu, Xin Wang, Nageswara S. V. Rao, Katharine Brigham, B. V. K. Vijaya Kumar
• Keywords: TON 2016