The effect of correlation of chemical tracers on chemical sensor network performance

Chemical sensor networks are used to detect the presence of hazardous chemicals released intentionally or accidentally into the atmosphere. Although many performance attributes of chemical sensor networks, such as energy utilization, detection delay, and false alarm characteristics, have been studied in the literature, the effect of spatial correlation of sensor readings on the network performance has not hitherto been studied. Because chemical tracers dispersing in the turbulent atmosphere are inherently spatially correlated, understanding how such correlations impact on the network performance is vital for chemical sensor network optimization. In this paper we investigate the impact of spatial correlation on the performance of chemical sensor networks.