Amplify and Forward for Correlated Data Gathering over Hierarchical Sensor Networks

We address the problem of estimating a random field via a wireless sensor network. We use a Multiple Access Channel (MAC) as the basic building block for such a network. For Gaussian sources over Gaussian MACs, we show that Amplify and Forward scheme (AF) performs well in such sensor network scenarios where the battery power is at a premium. We then extend this result to the hierarchical network scenario and show that it can perform favourably to the Slepian-Wolf based source coding and independent channel coding scheme. Since AF is simple and scalable, a good performance makes it an attractive scheme.