Matched source-channel communication for field estimation in wireless sensor networks

Abstract— Sensing, processing and communication must be jointly optimized for efficient operation of resource-limited wireless sensor networks. We propose a novel source-channel matching approach for distributed field estimation that naturally integrates these basic operations and facilitates a unified analysis of the impact of key parameters (number of nodes, power, field complexity) on estimation accuracy. At the heart of our approach is a distributed source-channel communication architecture that matches the spatial scale of field coherence with the spatial scale of node synchronization for phase-coherent communication: the sensor field is uniformly partitioned into multiple cells and the nodes in each cell coherently communicate simple statistics of their measurements to the destination via a dedicated noisy multiple access channel (MAC). Essentially, the optimal field estimate in each cell is implicitly computed at the destination via the coherent spatial averaging inhere...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: IPSN
• Authors: Waheed Uz Zaman Bajwa, Akbar M. Sayeed, Robert D. Nowak
• Keywords: IPSN 2005, Sensor, Sensor Networks, Wireless Sensor Networks, field Estimation