One-channel networked data fusion with communication constraint

In this paper, the problem of networked data fusion with communication constrain is considered. The communication constrain considered here is medium access constraint. When the synchronous time division multiplexing (STDM) mechanism is used to address this communication constrain, the contradiction between channel utilization ratio and delay time (the number of transmission sensors and delay steps) will be caused, then the number of transmission sensors have to be carefully selected to obtain the optimal estimate. A new model is developed that can truly reflect this contradiction by introducing a Bernoulli process λ_t to describe the selection strategy of the number of transmission sensors. Based on the obtained system model, the optimal data fusion filter is designed. It also gives the upper bounds of the expectation of estimation error covariance and estimation error covariance. The simulation shows the influence of λ (the probability of λ_t) on estimation performances.