Distributed fusion in sensor networks: a graphical models perspective
Müjdat Çetin, Lei Chen, John W. Fisher, Alexander Ihler, Randolph L. Moses, Martin J. Wainwright, Alan S. Willsky · Sabanci University · 2006
Distributed inference methods developed for graphical models comprise a principled approach for data fusion in sensor networks. The application of these methods, however, requires some care due to a number of issues that are particular to sensor networks. Chief of among these are the distributed nature of computation and deployment coupled with communications bandwidth and energy constraints typical of many sensor networks. Additionally, information sharing in a sensor network necessarily involves approximation. Traditional measures of distortion are not sufficient to characterize the quality of approximation as they do not address in an explicit manner the resulting impact on inference which is at the core of many data fusion problems. While both graphical models and a distributed sensor network have network structures associated with them, the mapping is not one to one. All of these issues complicate the mapping of a particular inference problem to a given sensor network structure. Indeed, there may be a variety of mappings with very different characteristics with regard to computational complexity and utilization of resources. Nevertheless, it is the case that many of the powerful distributed inference methods have a role in information fusion for sensor networks. In this article we present an overview of research conducted by the authors that has