Title: Discrete stochastic approximation algorithms for design of optimal sensor fusion rules

Authors: In Sock Jang, Xiaodong Wang, Vikram Krishnamurthy

Addresses: Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027-4712, USA. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027-4712, USA. ' Department of Electrical Engineering, University of British Columbia, Vancouver V6T 1Z4, Canada

Abstract: The basic idea of distributed detection is to have a number of independent sensors, each to make a local decision (typically a binary one) and then to combine their decisions at a fusion centre to make a global decision. Fault-tolerance has been considered as one of the main characteristics of wireless sensor networks. A fusion rule in the form of an error correction code has been recently proposed for better fault-tolerance in distributed sensor networks. In this paper, we propose to employ the powerful discrete stochastic approximation techniques to optimise the code matrix, that is, the fusion rule, with the objective of minimising the probability of decision error. We consider both the standard stochastic approximation algorithm and two newly proposed ones for this application. Extensive simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design paradigm in obtaining optimal fusion rules in distributed wireless sensor networks.

Keywords: discrete stochastic approximation; wireless sensor networks; distributed WSNs; distributed detection; fusion rules; minimum error probability; wireless networks; sensor fusion; error correction code; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2007.013201

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2007 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.211 - 217

Published online: 11 Apr 2007 *

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