Multisensor data fusion in Shared Sensor and Actuator Networks

Recent years have witnessed the emergence of the Shared Sensor and Actuator Networks (SSANs), which instead of assuming an application-specific design, allow the sensing and communication infrastructure to be shared among multiple applications. With an increasing number of sharing applications, a growing amount of sensor-generated data will be produced, from which useful information can be extracted. However, wireless sensors and actuators commonly rely on batteries as their energy sources, whose replacement is undesirable or unfeasible. Therefore, in order to reduce the amount of data to be transmitted in the wireless channel, thus saving energy, Multisensor Data Fusion Methods (MDF) can be employed. MDF can also enhance data accuracy in the SSAN scenario and make inferences that are not feasible from a single sensor or data source. Existing MDFs are currently utilized following an application-specific design for the network. We present an adaptation of well-known MDFs to deal with multiple applications simultaneously in the SSANs context. Our proposal is validated through simulations and tests on real nodes in the domain of smart grid applications.