A combined decision fusion and channel coding scheme for fault-tolerant classification in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we consider the distributed classification problem in wireless sensor networks. Local decisions made by local sensors, possibly in the presence of faults, are transmitted to the fusion center through fading channels. We integrate channel coding with the distributed fault-tolerant classification fusion approach, i.e., the DCFECC approach. We obtain a new fusion rule that combines both soft-decision decoding and local decision rules without introducing any additional redundancy. The soft decoding scheme is utilized to combat channel fading, while the DCFECC fusion structure provides excellent fault-tolerance capability.