State estimation for distributed parameter systems under intermittent observations

We consider the problem of estimating the state of a Distributed Parameter System, using discrete-time measurements taken by a set of wireless sensors. A few problems have to be faced in this context: first, wireless communication channels are lossy, therefore the reconstructor of the state could not receive the measurements; furthermore, wireless sensors are powered the batteries, hence it is crucial to use them as little as possible, to preserve their lifetime. Finally, the communication channel usually has little bandwidth, so as little as possible sensors must be used at any time. We present a selection sensors policy that aims to cope with the above issues, and we show, by numerical simulations, that the filter using the proposed sensor querying policy is able to find the best sensor (or a close sub-optimal one) or the best scanning sequence with a little computational effort.