Functional characterization of fault tolerant integration in distributed sensor networks

Fault-tolerance is an important issue in network design because sensor networks must function in a dynamic, uncertain world. A functional characterization of the fault-tolerant integration of abstract interval estimates is proposed. This model provides a preliminary version for a general framework that is hoped to develop to address the general problem of fault-tolerant integration of abstract sensor estimates. A scheme for narrowing the width of the sensor output in a specific failure model is proposed and given a functional representation. The main distinguishing feature of the model over the original model of K. Marzullo (1989) is in reducing the width of the output interval estimate significantly in most cases where the number of sensors involved is large