On Energy for Progressive and Consensus Estimation in Multihop Sensor Networks

This paper addresses a transmission energy problem for distributed (or decentralized) estimation in multihop wireless sensor networks (WSN). A primary advantage of distributed estimation is its energy efficiency when compared to centralized estimation. Two distributed estimation schemes are considered in this paper: progressive estimation and consensus estimation. We develop a generalized energy planning algorithm for a progressive estimation method which exploits routing tree and channel state information. We also analyze the energy cost for a consensus estimation method used in broadcast multihop WSN. We demonstrate by analysis and simulation that, subject to an equivalent performance, the total energy cost for consensus estimation is typically much higher than that for progressive estimation, but the peak energy for the former can be less than that for the latter.