Information-driven dynamic sensor collaboration

Abstract

This article overviews the information-driven approach to sensor collaboration in ad hoc sensor networks. The main idea is for a network to determine participants in a "sensor collaboration" by dynamically optimizing the information utility of data for a given cost of communication and computation. A definition of information utility is introduced, and several approximate measures of the information utility are developed for reasons of computational tractability. We illustrate the use of this approach using examples drawn from tracking applications.