Network Lifetime Extension Technique Using Probabilistic Transmission Control for Distributed Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents a novel network lifetime extension technique using probabilistic transmission control for distributed estimation in WSNs. In conventional techniques, only a few sensors are selected to transmit messages and the remaining sensors are not used for measurements. Also, as measurements cannot be carried out when the battery of the selected sensors are exhausted, network lifetimes strongly depend on a capacity of the batteries used in the selected sensors. The present technique increases the number of available sensors relative to conventional techniques. Sensors which is unselected in conventional techniques can be incorporated into the presented technique to obtain final estimates. As a result, the number of potentially usable sensors in networks increases. These newly-available sensors are partitioned into several sensor sets so as to maintain the same estimation performance. Since observation and transmission for each sensor set are not carried out at every observation period, network lifetime extension can be expected for a given estimation performance. Numerical examples are presented to validate the effectiveness of the presented technique.