Communication-estimation tradeoffs in wireless sensor networks

S. H. Son, S. R. Kulkarni, S. C. Schwartz, M. Roan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

The distributed nature of wireless sensor networks illustrates well classical engineering tradeoffs: how to minimize communication (and possibly computation) cost, and thus energy dissipation, while maintaining acceptable performance levels in estimation and inference applications. We study a simple sensor network under dependent Gaussian noise and develop strategies for parameter estimation in a variety of communication scenarios. From an energy point of view, sending all data to a fusion center is the most costly, but leads to optimum performance results. Processing data at each sensor and sending parameter estimates and associated quality measures is a reasonable communication saving procedure and yet, in some cases, may lead to performance equivalent to sending all data to the fusion center. A sequential procedure is most parsimonious in terms of communication cost and especially effective in large wireless sensor networks. We explore those conditions for which little, or no loss in performance is encountered with this sequential procedure. Specifically, we provide analytical expressions for the maximum likelihood estimator under "geometric" dependent noise. We show, by means of analysis and simulations, that the performance is only marginally degraded when the noise is assumed to be independent.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publication2005 IEEE ICASSP '05 - Proc. - Design and Implementation of Signal Proces.Syst.,Indust. Technol. Track,Machine Learning for Signal Proces. Education, Spec. Sessions
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
PagesV1065-V1068
ISBN (Print)0780388747, 9780780388741
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005
Event2005 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP '05 - Philadelphia, PA, United States
Duration: Mar 18 2005Mar 23 2005

Publication series

NameICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings
VolumeV
ISSN (Print)1520-6149

Other

Other2005 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, ICASSP '05
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityPhiladelphia, PA
Period3/18/053/23/05

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Software
  • Signal Processing
  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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