Title
Approximate Dynamic Programming for Communication-Constrained Sensor Network Management
Abstract
Resource management in distributed sensor networks is a challenging problem. This can be attributed to the fundamental tradeoff between the value of information contained in a distributed set of measurements versus the energy costs of acquiring measurements, fusing them into the conditional probability density function (pdf) and transmitting the updated conditional pdf. Communications is commonly the highest contributor among these costs, typically by orders of magnitude. Failure to consider this tradeoff can significantly reduce the operational lifetime of a sensor network. While a variety of methods have been proposed that treat a subset of these issues, the approaches are indirect and usually consider at most a single time step. In the context of object tracking with a distributed sensor network, we propose an approximate dynamic programming approach that integrates the value of information and the cost of transmitting data over a rolling time horizon. We formulate this tradeoff as a dynamic program and use an approximation based on a linearization of the sensor model about a nominal trajectory to simultaneously find a tractable solution to the leader node selection problem and the sensor subset selection problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the resulting algorithm can provide similar estimation performance to that of the common most informative sensor selection method for a fraction of the communication cost.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1109/TSP.2007.896099
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
Keywords
Field
DocType
tracking,conditional probability,probability,probability density function,resource management,sensors,time measurement,value of information,estimation,sensor network,object tracking,wireless sensor networks,resource manager,dynamic programming
Dynamic programming,Mathematical optimization,Time horizon,Conditional probability distribution,Conditional probability,Computer science,Control theory,Sensor array,Brooks–Iyengar algorithm,Video tracking,Wireless sensor network
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
55
8
1053-587X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
64
2.65
12
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jason L. Williams121715.34
John W. Fisher III287874.44