Node counting in wireless sensor networks

A distributed consensus algorithm for estimating the number of nodes in a wireless sensor network in the presence of communication noise is proposed. The idea is based on estimating the norm of available samples at nodes. Each node generates its own random initial measurements and updates its state by only communicating with its neighbors: the algorithm is fully distributed with no assumptions about the structure of the network. We also show that there is a trade-off between the estimation error and the storage at each node.