Multimodal wireless networks: distributed surveillance with multiple nodes

Multimodal wireless networks are wireless networks that offer multiple functionalities realized on the same infrastructure. In this paper, we consider a multimodal network that has two modes of operation: the communication mode, when the network is used as a traditional wireless communication network, and the surveillance mode, when the network is used as a distributed sensor network that can detect illegal intrusion by detecting changes in the propagation environment caused by the intruder. We address the problem of distributed surveillance in a network consisting of multiple nodes: we develop a multi-sensor model for the received signal parameters of interest and derive a detector capable of detecting changes in these parameters. The experimental results demonstrate that combining the information from different nodes with the appropriate fusion function results in considerably improved detection performance compared to that of single-node detectors.