On state fusers over long-haul sensor networks

We consider a network of sensors wherein the state estimates are sent from sensors to a fusion center to generate a global state estimate. The underlying fusion algorithm affects the performance measure Q_CC(τ) (with subscripts CC indicating the effects of the communications and computing quality) of the global state estimate computed within the allocated time τ. We present a probabilistic performance bound on Q_CC(τ) as a function of the distributions of state estimates, communications parameters as well as the fusion algorithm. We present simulations of simplified scenarios to illustrate the qualitative effects of different fusers, and system-level simulations to complement the analytical results.