Opportunistic Sensing in Wireless Sensor Networks: Theory and Application

Opportunistic Sensing (OS) refers to a paradigm for signal and information processing in which a network of sensing systems can automatically discover and select sensor platforms based on an operational scenario. In this paper, we propose theory and algorithms of OS for advancing autonomous sensing that not only ensures effective utilization of sensing assets but also provides robust optimal performance. We propose an information theoretical criterion for opportunistic sensing in wireless sensor networks and derive an algorithm for efficient OS. We apply our OS algorithm to radar sensor networks for sense-through-foliage target detection, and show that our OS algorithm works very well and much better than other approach.