A distributed data fusion approach for mobile ad hoc networks

This paper establishes a distributed data fusion method for ad hoc networks, enabling each device or agent to operate autonomously and collaboratively. In such a network, no infrastructure exists for centralized processing, and a lack of fixed network membership creates ambiguous data fusion and reasoning architectures, communications patterns, and communications timing. The resulting data fusion method is shown to be consistent with other methods, including known architectures with closed-form solutions. The paper also applies the method to a short analysis of distributed data fusion with non-deterministic communications duty cycle where existing methods are impractical.