A Distributed Estimation Algorithm for Tracking over Wireless Sensor Networks

A new distributed estimation algorithm for tracking using a wireless sensor network is presented. We investigate how to track a time varying signal, noisily sensed by the nodes of the network. The algorithm is distributed, meaning that it does not require a central coordination among the nodes. Moreover, the proposed approach is scalable with respect to the network size, which means that its complexity does not grow with respect to the total number of nodes. The algorithm designed turns out to be composed by a cascade structure. Local constraints are determined to guarantee the global asymptotic stability of the estimation error. The algorithm can be applied e.g., for the position estimation, temporal synchronization, as well as tracking of signals. Performance is illustrated by simulations, where our filter is shown to behave better than other distributed schemes proposed in the literature.