Distributed edge detection with composite hypothesis test in wireless sensor networks

A statistical approach to distributed edge sensor detection with wireless sensor networks is proposed in this research. The objective is to determine whether a target sensor is located in the edge area of a certain phenomenon or not, based on data from its neighboring sensors. Due to the nature of wireless sensor networks, it is desirable to have a distributed algorithm that has a low computational complexity and a low data communication cost among sensors. With some reasonable assumptions and the aid of composite hypothesis testing, we propose data fusion as well as decision fusion methods for edge sensor detection to fulfill the aforementioned constraints. Numerical experiments are used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm.