Distributed Scalar Quantizers for Gaussian Channels

The problem of designing simple and energy efficient sensor nodes for a wireless sensor network is considered in a joint source-channel coding perspective. An algorithm for designing distributed scalar quantizers optimized for orthogonal additive white Gaussian noise channels is proposed and evaluated. It is demonstrated that correlation between sources can be useful in order to reduce quantization distortion as well as protecting data when being transmitted over non-ideal channels. It is also demonstrated that the obtained system is robust against channel SNR mismatch.