Optimal distributed fusion for state estimation in multirate wireless sensor networks

This paper is concerned with the distributed fusion estimation problem for linear system observed by multirate sensors in the environment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Rates of the sampling, estimation, transmission in the WSNs are different. The distributed fusion estimation is composed of two stages. At the first stage, every sensor in the WSNs collects measurements of its own to generate a local estimation, then the local estimations from the neighboring sensors and the neighbour´s neighbor sensors are further collected to form the fusion estimation at the second stage. The main result is that a distributed fusion estimation algorithm is presented which is simple and low energy consumption. The performance, namely, the effectiveness and the stability of the algorithm under multiple sensors, is analyzed. A numerical example is given to show the feasibility and effectiveness of the presented algorithm.