ITR-Fundamental Limits in Sensor Networks

在过去的十年中，无线传感器网络已经从最初的单向星形网络演变为种类繁多的形式，具有大规模的研究计划和重大的商业化活动。这些系统将越来越多地将物理世界连接到广域网络，用于监视和控制目的，包括国土防御和工业应用。然而，人们对网络从环境中收集有用信息并将其传递给更大的公共网络的效率的基本限制知之甚少。目前正在对四个领域的基本限制进行研究：相关信源的率失真区域、分布式节点的容量、跨网络的分组延迟和异类无线网络的可靠性。这四个主题共同解决了传感器网络设计中的许多重要参数，并将允许针对基本限制测试实用算法。

Over the past decade, wireless sensor networks have evolved from primarily unidirectional star networks into a wide variety of forms, with large-scale research programs and significant commercialization activity. These systems will increasingly connect the physical world to wide-area networks for monitoring and control purposes including homeland defense and industrial applications. Yet relatively little is known on the fundamental limits to how efficiently a network can glean useful information from the environment to process it and relay it to the larger public network. Research is being conducted on fundamental limits in four areas: the rate distortion region for correlated sources, capacity for distributed nodes, packet delay across networks, and the dependability of heterogeneous wireless networks. These four topics collectively address many of the important parameters in sensor network design and will allow practical algorithms to be tested against fundamental limits.