We propose an entropy-based sensor selection heuristic for localization. Given 1) a prior probability distribution of the target location, and 2) the locations and the sensing models of a set of candidate sensors for selection, the heuristic selects an informative sensor such that the fusion of the selected sensor observation with the prior target location distribution would yield on average the greatest or nearly the greatest reduction in the entropy of the target location distribution. The heuristic greedily selects one sensor in each step without retrieving any actual sensor observations. The heuristic is also computationally much simpler than the mutual-information-based approaches. The effectiveness of the heuristic is evaluated using localization simulations in which Gaussian sensing models are assumed for simplicity. The heuristic is more effective when the optimal candidate sensor is more informative.

Wireless sensor networks have attracted attention from a diverse set of researchers, due to the unique combination of distributed, resource and data processing constraints. However, until now, the lack of real sensor network deployments have resulted in ad-hoc assumptions on a wide range of issues including topology characteristics and data distribution. As deployments of sensor networks become more widespread [1, 2], many of these assumptions need to be revisited.

No abstract

Abstract-In this paper, we describes the informationtheoretic approaches to sensor selection and sensor placement in sensor networks for target localization and tracking. We have developed a sensor selection heuristic to activate the most informative candidate sensor for collaborative target localization and tracking. The fusion of the observation by the selected sensor with the prior target location distribution yields nearly the greatest reduction of the entropy of the expected posterior target location distribution. Our sensor selection heuristic is computationally less complex and thus more suitable to sensor networks with moderate computing power than the mutual information sensor selection criteria. We have also developed a method to compute the posterior target location distribution with the minimum entropy that could be achieved by the fusion of observations of the sensor network with a given deployment geometry. We have found that the covariance matrix of the posterior target location distribution with the minimum entropy is consistent with the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRB) of the target location estimate. Using the minimum entropy of the posterior target location distribution, we have characterized the effect of the sensor placement geometry on the localization accuracy.Index Terms-information theory, sensor selection, sensor placement, sensor networks, target localization and tracking.

We investigate task decomposition and collaboration in a two-tiered sensor network for habitat monitoring. The system recognizes and localizes a specified type of birdcalls. The system has a few powerful macronodes in the first tier, and many less powerful micronodes in the second tier. Each macronode combines data collected by multiple micronodes for target classification and localization. We describe two types of lightweight preprocessing which significantly reduce data transmission from micronodes to macronodes. Micronodes classify events according to their cross-zero rates and discard irrelevant events. Data about events of interest is reduced and compressed before being transmitted to macronodes for target localization. Preliminary experiments illustrate the effectiveness of event filtering and data reduction at micronodes