Distributed Scalar Quantizers for Noisy Channels

Sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks should preferable be both cheap and energy efficient. To cope with these requirements an algorithm for designing distributed scalar quantizers optimized for noisy channels is proposed and evaluated. Applying the algorithm results in locally optimal systems. It is demonstrated that the correlation between the sources can be used to reduce the quantization distortion when the channel is close to error-free. If, on the other hand, there are a lot of disturbances on the channel the correlation can be used to introduce protection against channel errors.