Energy-Efficient Joint Estimation in Sensor Networks: Analog vs. Digital

TL;DR

This paper proposes an energy-efficient analog joint estimation method for sensor networks, demonstrating it often outperforms digital approaches in energy consumption while maintaining estimation quality.

Contribution

It introduces a purely analog approach for joint estimation in sensor networks that minimizes total transmission power under a distortion constraint, outperforming digital methods.

Findings

Analog approach is more energy-efficient than digital without coding.

Analog method can outperform digital with coding in certain scenarios.

Simulation results validate the energy savings of the analog approach.

Abstract

Sensor networks in which energy is a limited resource so that energy consumption must be minimized for the intended application are considered. In this context, an energy-efficient method for the joint estimation of an unknown analog source under a given distortion constraint is proposed. The approach is purely analog, in which each sensor simply amplifies and forwards the noise-corrupted analog bservation to the fusion center for joint estimation. The total transmission power across all the sensor nodes is minimized while satisfying a distortion requirement on the joint estimate. The energy efficiency of this analog approach is compared with previously proposed digital approaches with and without coding. It is shown in our simulation that the analog approach is more energy-efficient than the digital system without coding, and in some cases outperforms the digital system with optimal coding.