Overview Rest of the Course

Fundamental to sensor network operations are the

networking layer and the infrastructure services to
support the correct functioning of nodes.
Units 3 and 4 provide a systematic overview of the
networking algorithms and protocols for sensor
networks, including geographic, energy-aware, and
attribute-based routing protocols.
Algorithms for maintaining time synchronization
and for discovering locations would also be covered
in these units.
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Unit II
Canonical Problem: Localization &
Tracking
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Unit-II: Overview
We would ground the technical development
of the course on a small number of carefully
chosen examples.
Tracking is such an example.
Unit 2 introduces the tracking problem, task
requirements, a formulation of localization and
tracking in a probabilistic framework, and
important issues in designing information
processing algorithms in sensor networks.
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Canonical Problem :
Localization & Tracking
A tracking scenario.
Problem formulation.
Distributed Representation & Interface of
states.
Tracking Multiple Objects.
Sensor models.
Performance Comparison & Metrics.
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Unit2:Canonical Problem:

Localization and Tracking
TRACKING AS A CANONICAL
PROBLEM FOR CSIP

Conforming to a general rule or
acceptable procedure/standard
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Essential Capability
Localizing and tracking moving stimuli or objects
is an essential capability for a sensor network in
many practical applications.
Moreover, it is a familiar problem that can be used
as a vehicle to study many information processing
and organization problems for sensor networks.
Central problem for collaborative signal and
information processing (CSIP) is to dynamically
define and form sensor groups based on task
requirements and resource availability.


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Most important issues surrounding
collaborative processing.

Which nodes should sense, which have
useful information and should
communicate, which should receive the
information and how often, and so on, all in
a dynamically evolving environment.

Tracking exposes the above important
issues

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Sensor Network
A Mathematical Definition
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V and E specify a network graph, with its
nodes V, and link connectivity E
PV is a set of functions that characterizes the
properties of each node in V, such as its
location, computational capability, sensing
modality, sensor output type, energy
reserve, and so on.


From a sensing and information
processing point of view, we define a
sensor network as an abstract tuple,

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Possible sensing modalities include acoustic,
seismic, magnetic, IR, temperature, or light.
Possible types of sensor output include
information about signal amplitude, source
direction-of-arrival (DOA), target range, or target
classification label.
Similarly, PE specifies properties for each link,
such as link capacity and quality.


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Another class of SN applications
- the problem of sensing a field.

A field is a distributed physical quantity,
such as temperature, pressure, or optical
flow across a region of space.
Each point in a field is associated with a
scalar or vector value.
A temperature field defines a temperature
value for each point in a planar area or
spatial volume


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In the tracking case, the collaborative processing
proceeds along the temporal dimension as well as
in the spatial domain, especially when multiple
targets interact.
In the field sensing case, the collaboration among
sensors primarily occurs in the spatial domain and
occasionally along the temporal dimension when
the field evolves over time.

Relating to time as distinguished from space
Rest of the unit: we will focus on the tracking problem, in order to
bring out the key information processing issues.

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A tracking task
Can be formulated as a constrained
optimization problem shown next >>
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A tracking scenario, showing two moving
targets, X and Y, in a field of sensors. Large
circles represent the range of radio
communication for each node
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Problem Formulation

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Sensing, Observation or
Measurement model
We will formulate our estimation problem
using standard estimation
theory. The time-dependent measurement, z(t)
i , of sensor i with
characteristics
(t)
i is related to the parameters, x(t), that we wish
to estimate through above model

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Special case of the model
In above, we consider a
general form of the
observation model that
accounts for possibly
nonlinear relations
between the sensor type,
sensor position, noise
model, and the parameters
we wish to estimate.
A special case would be

where fi is a (possibly
nonlinear) observation
function, and wi is
additive, zero mean noise
with known covariance

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Illustration
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Next Topic- Distributed
Representation and

Inference of States

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How do we represent the state information
of a target so that efficient computation can
be performed to infer the target state?
To address this, we need to consider both
the representation of state information, or
model, as well as the mapping of the
representation to distributed sensors.

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Impact of Choice of Representation

There are several ways
to approximate an
arbitrary belief state
regarding the targets:

1. We can
approximate the belief
by a family of
distributions-
parametric
2. We can
approximate the belief
by weighted point
samples
nonparametric

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Impact of Choice
The representation of the belief impacts the
amount of communication resource
consumed when sending the belief state to a
remote sensor.

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The trade-offs- passing on the belief
states
Representing the true belief by a parametric
approximation with relatively few parameters will
result in a poor approximation of the belief state,
but with the benefit that fewer bits need to be
transmitted.
On the other hand, representing the true belief by a
nonparametric approximation will result in a more
accurate approximation of the belief at the cost of
more transmitted bits.

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Parametric Representation

The reason able to transmit relatively few bits in
the parametric case is due to the assumption that
all sensors are aware of the parametric class of
beliefs.
Knowledge of this parametric class is the
background knowledge that allows for only a
small number of bits to be transmitted.
Only mean and covariance need to be transmitted.
(in case of Gaussian distribution)


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Measurement-Based Representation
(Nonparametric)
For the nonparametric case, there is no
constant-size parameterization of the belief
in general.
However, assuming that the model of the
measurements is known, we can
parameterize the belief by storing a history
of all measurements. (Analysis- OTW >>
hybrid representation)

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Hybrid Representation
1. Initially, the belief is parameterized by a
history of measurements.
2. Once the belief begins to look unimodal,
we will approximate the belief by a
Gaussian and, from here on, the
parameterization of the belief includes the
mean and covariance.


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Next Topic of the Unit
Tracking Multiple Objects
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Tracking Multiple Objects

We have considered the estimation problem
for tracking a single target by a sensor
network. Tracking multiple interacting
targets distributed over a geographical
region is significantly more challenging for
two reasons:
Curse of dimensionality:
Mapping to distributed platforms:

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Dimensionality
The presence and interaction of multiple phenomena cause
the dimension of the underlying state spaces to increase.
Recall that the joint state space of multiple targets is a
product space of individual state spaces for the targets.
Estimating the phenomenon states jointly suffers from the
state-space explosion, since the amount of data required
increases exponentially with the dimension.
This is inherent in any high-dimensional estimation
problem, regardless of whether the sensing system is
centralized or distributed.

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Mapping
An estimation algorithm for tracking
multiple targets will have to be mapped to a
set of distributed sensors, as will the state-
space model for the estimation problem.
To ensure the responsiveness and scalability
of the system, the communication and
computation should be localized to relevant
sensors only.

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Modes of interaction in a multi-target tracking problem.
The corresponding state representations move from
factored to joint and then back to factored spaces

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State-Space Decomposition

The first challenge noted earlier is addressed by
developing a distributed state-space representation
that systematically decomposes a high-
dimensional estimation problem into more
manageable lower-dimensional sub problems.
The basic idea is to factor a joint state space of all
targets of interest, whenever possible, into lower
dimensional subspaces, each of which can be
represented and processed in a distributed fashion



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Second Challenge-Mapping
The second challenge is addressed by developing
a collaborative group abstraction in which the
state-space model is mapped onto a sensor
network via dynamically formed collaborative
groups.
Group structures must be designed to create and
maintain the necessary state models in suitable
joint or factored spaces and to support
communications among them.

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Collaborative groups can effectively
localize the computation and
communication to sensors who must share
and manipulate the common state
information. (further discussion in unit5)

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Next Topic
Sensor Models
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Sensor Models for tracking (two)

Acoustic amplitude sensors
Direction-of-arrival (DOA) sensors.
An acoustic amplitude sensor node measures
sound amplitude at the microphone and
estimates the distance to the target based on
the physics of sound attenuation.


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DOA Sensor
An acoustic DOA sensor is a small microphone
array.
Using beam-forming techniques, a DOA sensor
can determine the direction from which the sound
comes, that is, the bearing of the target.
Generally, range sensors estimate distance based
on received signal strength or time difference of
arrival (TDOA).
DOA sensors estimate signal bearing based on
TDOA.




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Data Fusion - means
Easily fuse data from multiple types of sensors.
A sensor network can utilize a variety of sensing
modalities to optimally sense phenomena of
interest.
Relatively low-cost sensors such as microphones
are attractive because of their affordability as well
as simplicity in computation.
However, there are no barriers to adding other
sensor types, including imaging, motion, infrared
(IR), or magnetic sensors.



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Sensor Models- Characteristics
Characterized by properties such as cost,
size, sensitivity, resolution, response time,
energy usage, and ease of calibration and
installation.
One may have to carefully balance the
utility of a sensor with the cost of
processing the data.


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OTW
Principle of functioning - Acoustic
Amplitude Sensor and DOA Sensor

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Performance Comparison and
Metrics

Last Topic of Unit2
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Performance Comparison and Metrics

Since a sensor network is designed for tasks
such as detection, tracking, or classification,
comparison or measure of performance is
only meaningful when it is discussed in the
context of these tasks.
Some of the commonly used measures of
performance for these tasks are discussed.

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Detect ability

How reliably and timely can the system
detect a physical stimulus? This may be
measured by sensor coverage, detection
resolution, dynamic range, or response
latency.

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Accuracy

How well does the system detect, localize,
or track physical stimuli?
Accuracy is typically characterized in terms
of tracking errors (e.g., deviation,
smoothness, continuity) or detection and
classification errors (e.g., false alarms or
misses).

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Scalability

How does a specific property of the system
vary as the size of the network, the number
of physical stimuli, or the number of active
queries increases?

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Survivability

How does the system perform in the
presence of node or link failures as well as
malicious attacks?
Sometimes this is also called robustness.

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Resource usage:

What is the amount of resources that each
task consumes?
The resources include energy and
bandwidth.

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Performance Measures
Source SNR: This is measured as the SNR at a
reference distance from the signal source. For an
acoustic source, this is defined as the log ratio of
sound pressure level (SPL) of source at the
reference distance over SPL of background noise.
Obstacle density: This may be measured by the
probability of line of- sight obstruction for a
randomly placed target-sensor pair. It is useful in
characterizing sensors such as imagers, but less
useful when multi-path effects on the signal are
significant.


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Contd
Network sleep efficiency: The number of
hours of target tracking versus the total
number of node hours in fully awake mode
for the entire network.
Percentage of track loss: Percentage of runs
of a full scenario where continuity of
vehicle identity is not correctly maintained.


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Conclusion
This unit has introduced the tracking problem as a
representative problem for studying a number of
information processing issues for sensor networks.
We focused on the issues of how to represent
states of physical phenomena, cope with the curse
of the dimensionality, and map the state-space
model to distributed sensors.


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Conclusion
We noted that the distributed representation of
state information plays a key role in designing
sensor network processing algorithms.
Because of the decentralized nature of sensor
network data collection, the a priori world model
as well as the representation of the state
information must reside in sensor nodes across the
network in order to process the information in situ.

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This raises a number of interesting design
issues, such as how to distribute the model
and state representation across the nodes,
how to update the distributed information
and keep it consistent, and how to
dynamically assign sensors to process
different pieces of the state information.

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