Contour line extraction in a multi-modal field with sensor networks

A distributed approach to contour line extraction in a multi-modal field using wireless sensor networks is proposed in this work. In contrast with previous work on edge or boundary estimation, which is primarily concerned with the region of a certain phenomenon, contour lines offer more detailed information about the underlying phenomenon. To effectively utilize the limited resources of sensors, a cluster-based data fusion technique is adopted so that the phenomenon of interest can be monitored in the base station (BS) without demanding excessive raw data transmission. Simulation results are given to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed approach. Furthermore, some analysis is conducted to understand the impact of the sensor density and noise on the performance of the proposed approach.