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Censored Distributed Space-Time Coding for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

We consider the application of distributed space-time coding in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In particular, sensors use a common noncoherent distributed space-time block code (DSTBC) to forward their local decisions to the fusion center (FC) which makes the final decision. We show that the performance of distributed space-time coding is negatively affected by erroneous sensor decisions caused by observation noise. To overcome this problem of error propagation, we introduce censored distributed space-time coding where only reliable decisions are forwarded to the FC. The optimum noncoherent maximum-likelihood and a low-complexity, suboptimum generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) FC decision rules are derived and the performance of the GLRT decision rule is analyzed. Based on this performance analysis we derive a gradient algorithm for optimization of the local decision/censoring threshold. Numerical and simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed censoring scheme making distributed space-time coding a prime candidate for signaling in WSNs.

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Correspondence to S. Yiu.

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Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Yiu, S., Schober, R. Censored Distributed Space-Time Coding for Wireless Sensor Networks. EURASIP J. Adv. Signal Process. 2008, 127689 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/127689

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1155/2008/127689

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