Robust Data Collection and Lifetime Improvement in Wireless Sensor Networks through Data Imputation

In this paper, a data imputation method, which can achieve robust data collection and also extend network lifetime for Wireless Sensor Networks, is proposed. Due to the lossy nature of the wireless medium, it is common for packets to be lost. In order to provide some reliability for the application layer, a data imputation method which predicts the data values contained in missing packets is proposed. The method is able to maximize the use of both temporal and spatial predictors. The proposed imputation method improves accuracy by up to 73% when compared with a previously proposed imputation method. The method can also be used to reduce the number of retransmissions in the network by up to 12% at the cost of a small increase in error, thus increasing the network lifetime of the wireless sensor network.