ITR-Fundamental Limits in Sensor Networks

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Over the past decade, wireless sensor networks have evolved from primarily unidirectional star networks into a wide variety of forms, with large-scale research programs and significant commercialization activity. These systems will increasingly connect the physical world to wide-area networks for monitoring and control purposes including homeland defense and industrial applications. Yet relatively little is known on the fundamental limits to how efficiently a network can glean useful information from the environment to process it and relay it to the larger public network. Research is being conducted on fundamental limits in four areas: the rate distortion region for correlated sources, capacity for distributed nodes, packet delay across networks, and the dependability of heterogeneous wireless networks. These four topics collectively address many of the important parameters in sensor network design and will allow practical algorithms to be tested against fundamental limits.