A modified broadcast strategy for distributed signal estimation in a wireless sensor network with a tree topology

Abstract

We envisage a wireless sensor network (WSN) where each node is tasked with estimating a set of node-specific desired signals that has been corrupted by additive noise. The nodes accomplish this estimation by means of the distributed adaptive node-specific estimation (DANSE) algorithm in a tree topology (T-DANSE). In this paper, we consider a network where there is at least one node with a large (virtually infinite) energy budget, which we select as the root node. We propose a modification to the signal flow of the T-DANSE algorithm where instead of each node having two-way signal communication, there is a single signal flow toward the root node of the tree topology which then broadcasts a single signal to all other nodes. We demonstrate that the modified algorithm is equivalent to the original T-DANSE algorithm in terms of the signal estimation performance, shifts a large part of the communication burden toward the highpower root node to reduce the energy consumption in the low-power nodes and reduces the input-output delay.