Bandwidth Scaling for Efficient Inference Over a Power-Limited MAC

We introduce a likelihood based multiple access (LBMA) communication/estimation scheme for nonrandom parameter estimation in wireless sensor networks with additive multiple access channels. Constraining the system in terms of energy and allowing the available number of degrees of freedom to scale as n^α, 0.5 <; α <; 1, we prove that LBMA is asymptotically efficient. Thus, the new scheme is appropriate for large networks. LBMA is, in addition, simple to implement and relies upon an intuitive approach.