121717769
Coverage for target localization in wireless sensor networks
Target tracking and localization are important applications in wireless sensor networks. Although the coverage problem for target detection has been intensively studied, few consider the coverage problem from the perspective of target localization. In this paper, we propose two methods to estimate the lower bound of sensor density to guarantee a bounded localization error over the sensing field. We first convert the coverage problem for localization to a conventional disk coverage problem, where the sensing area is a disk centered at the sensor. Our results show that the disk coverage model requires 4 times more sensors for localization compared to detection applications. We then introduce the idea of sector coverage to tighten the lower bound. The lower bound derived through sector coverage is 2 times less than through disk coverage. A distributed sector coverage algorithm is then proposed in this paper. Compared to disk coverage, sector coverage requires more computations. However, it provides more accurate density estimations than the disk model. Numerical evaluations show that the density bound derived through our sector coverage model is tight.
15401774
Information Coverage and Network Lifetime in Energy Constrained Wireless Sensor Networks
This paper studies the problem of how to maximize the network lifetime while preserving network coverage for an energy constrained wireless sensor network. We consider network coverage from an our recently proposed information coverage model [1] other than the conventional sensing disk model. The lifetime maximization problem is modeled as a nonlinear programming problem and is shown NP-Complete. We then propose a family of greedy algorithms to allocate sensors different roles such that different sensors may consume different amount of energies in different intervals to prolong network lifetime while still guaranteeing application requirements. Simulation results suggest that the algorithm with the best balancing between communication energy consumption and area coverage requirement has the highest network lifetime.
876538
Dependent link padding algorithms for low latency anonymity systems
Low latency anonymity systems are susceptive to traffic analysis attacks. In this paper, we propose a dependent link padding scheme to protect anonymity systems from traffic analysis attacks while providing a strict delay bound. The covering traffic generated by our scheme uses the minimum sending rate to provide full anonymity for a given set of flows. The relationship between user anonymity and the minimum covering traffic rate is then studied via analysis and simulation. When user flows are Poisson processes with the same sending rate, the minimum covering traffic rate to provide full anonymity to m users is O(log m). For Pareto traffic, we show that the rate of the covering traffic converges to a constant when the number of flows goes to infinity. Finally, we use real Internet trace files to study the behavior of our algorithm when user flows have different rates.
1588647
Coverage in Hybrid Mobile Sensor Networks
This paper considers the coverage problem for hybrid networks which comprise both static and mobile sensors. The mobile sensors in our network only have limited mobility, i.e., they can move only once over a short distance. In random static sensor networks, sensor density should increase as O(log L + k log log L) to provide k-coverage in a network with a size of L. As an alternative, an all-mobile network can provide k-coverage with a constant density of O(k), independent of network size L. We show that the maximum distance for mobile sensors is O( 1/radic(k) log 3/4(kL)). We then propose a hybrid network structure, comprising static sensors and a small fraction of O( 1/radic(k)) of mobile sensors. For this network structure, we prove that k-coverage is also achievable with a constant sensor density of O(k). Furthermore, for this hybrid structure, we prove that the maximum distance which any mobile sensor has to move is bounded as O(log(3/4)L). We then propose a distributed relocation algorithm, where each mobile sensor only requires local information in order to optimally relocate itself. We verify our analysis via extensive numerical evaluations and show an implementation of the mobility algorithm on real mobile sensor platforms.
42723008
Worst and Best Information Exposure Paths in Wireless Sensor Networks
This paper proposes the concept of information exposure for a point and for a path based on estimation theory. The information exposure of a point is defined as the probability that the absolute value of estimation error is less than some threshold; and the information exposure for a path is the average information exposure of all points along the path. The higher the information exposure, the higher the confidence level that some information of a target is exposed and the better the target is monitored. An approximation algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of finding the worst (best) information exposure path in wireless sensor networks, and its performance is evaluated via simulations. Furthermore, a heuristic for adaptive sensor deployment is proposed to increase the information exposure of the worst information exposure path.
5517318
Power Control for Distributed MAC Protocols in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks
In centralized wireless networks, reducing the transmission power normally leads to higher network transport throughput. In this paper, we investigate power control in a different scenario, where the network adopts distributed MAC layer coordination mechanisms. We first consider widely adopted RTS/CTS based MAC protocols. We show that an optimal power control protocol should use higher transmission power than the "just enough" power in order to improve spatial utilization. The optimal protocol has a minimal transmission floor area of Theta(dijdmax), where dmax is the maximal transmission range and dij is the link length. This surprisingly implies that if a long link is broken into several short links, then the sum of the transmission floors reserved by the short links is still comparable to that reserved by the long link. Thus, using short links does not necessarily lead to higher throughput. Another consequence of this is that, with the optimal RTS/CTS based MAC, rate control can at best provide a factor of 2 improvement in transport throughput. We then extend our results to other distributed MAC protocols which uses physical carrier sensing or busy-tone as the control signal. Our simulation results show that the optimal power controlled scheme outperforms other popular MAC layer power control protocols.
11942108
Subspace Partitioning for Target Detection and Identification
Detection of a given target or set of targets from observed data is a problem countered in many applications. Regardless of the algorithm selected, detection performance can be severely degraded when the subspace defined by the target data set is singular or ill conditioned. High correlations between target components and their linear combinations lead to false positives and misidentifications, especially for subspace-based detectors. In this paper, we propose a subspace partitioning scheme that allows for detection to be performed in a number of better conditioned subspaces instead of the original subspace. The proposed technique is applied to Raman spectroscopic data analysis. Through both simulation and experimental results, we demonstrate the improvement in the overall detection performance when using the proposed subspace partitioning scheme in conjunction with several subspace detection methods that are commonly used in practice.
8292023
Fuzzy Multi-Dimensional Search in the Wayfinder File System
With the explosion in the amount of semi-structured data users access and store, there is a need for complex search tools to retrieve often very heterogeneous data in a simple and efficient way. Existing tools usually index text content, allowing for some IR-style ranking on the textual part of the query, but only consider structure (e.g., file directory) and metadata (e.g., date, file type) as filtering conditions. We propose a novel multidimensional querying approach to semi-structured data searches in personal information systems by allowing users to provide fuzzy structure and metadata conditions in addition to traditional keyword conditions. The provided query interface is more comprehensive than content-only searches as it considers three query dimensions (content, structure, metadata) in the search. We have implemented our proposed approach in the Wayfinder file system. In this demo, we will use this implementation to both present an overview of the unified scoring framework underlying the fuzzy multi-dimensional querying approach and demonstrate its potential in improving search results.
90043
A new approach to design robust backstepping controller for MIMO nonlinear systems with input unmodeled dynamics
In this paper, a new scheme inspired by the idea of decentralized control methodology is proposed to design output feedback controllers for a class of MIMO nonlinear systems with input unmodeled dynamics. With dynamic normalization and backstepping approach, the destabilizing effects of unmodeled dynamics depending on inputs are compensated and global uniform boundedness of all the signals in the closed loop system is established for sufficiently weak input unmodeled dynamics.
16514948
Interplay Between Routing and Distributed Source Coding in Wireless Sensor Network
Recent advances in distributed source coding (DSC) for mission-driven wireless sensor networks (WSN) are related to the coding for multiple correlated sensors in applications such as real time target tracking and environment monitoring. The characteristic of these DSC applications provides significant potential opportunities in the associated sensor network to utilize multirate transmissions for enhancing network performance. In this paper, we study a methodology for interplay optimization between routing and DSC in WSN, and propose a novel multirate based routing scheme for mission-driven DSC applications that considerably extends network lifetime. The proposed scheme adopts the rate assignment based on the residual energy, and employs a joint rate and energy scheduling mechanism to meet the end-to-end transmission rate constraint, information precision requirement, and the energy constraints in the network for DSC. Simulation results show that this multirate based routing scheme achieves significantly longer network lifetime compared to other existing research in WSN for DSC applications.
12021051
COE: A General Approach for Efficient Genome-Wide Two-Locus Epistasis Test in Disease Association Study
The availability of high density single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) data has made genome-wide association study computationally challenging. Two-locus epistasis (gene-gene interaction) detection has attracted great research interest as a promising method for genetic analysis of complex diseases. In this paper, we propose a general approach, COE, for efficient large scale gene-gene interaction analysis, which supports a wide range of tests. In particular, we show that many commonly used statistics are convex functions. From the observed values of the events in two-locus association test, we can develop an upper bound of the test value. Such an upper bound only depends on single-locus test and the genotype of the SNP-pair. We thus group and index SNP-pairs by their genotypes. This indexing structure can benefit the computation of all convex statistics. Utilizing the upper bound and the indexing structure, we can prune most of the SNP-pairs without compromising the optimality of the result. Our approach is especially efficient for large permutation test. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our approach provides orders of magnitude performance improvement over the brute force approach.