New Models for the Correlation in Sensor Data

In this paper, we propose two new models of spatial correlations in sensor data in a data-gathering sensor network. A particular property of these models is that if a sensor node knows in \textit{how many} bits it needs to transmit its data, then it also knows \textit{which} bits of its data it needs to transmit.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure

Worst-Case Interactive Communication and Enhancing Sensor Network Lifetime

We are concerned with the problem of maximizing the worst-case lifetime of a data-gathering wireless sensor network consisting of a set of sensor nodes directly communicating with a base-station.We propose to solve this problem by modeling sensor node and base-station communication as the interactive communication between multiple correlated informants (sensor nodes) and a recipient (base-station). We provide practical and scalable interactive communication protocols for data gathering in sensor networks and demonstrate their efficiency compared to traditional approaches. In this paper, we first develop a formalism to address the problem of worst-case interactive communication between a set of multiple correlated informants and a recipient. We realize that there can be different objectives to achieve in such a communication scenario and compute the optimal number of messages and bits exchanged to realize these objectives. Then, we propose to adapt these results in the context of single-hop data-gathering sensor networks. Finally, based on this proposed formalism, we propose a clustering based communication protocol for large sensor networks and demonstrate its superiority over a traditional clustering protocol.Comment: Minor revision: fixed some typos and reorganized some portions. 12 pages, 3 figure

Energy Conscious Interactive Communication for Sensor Networks

In this work, we are concerned with maximizing the lifetime of a cluster of sensors engaged in single-hop communication with a base-station. In a data-gathering network, the spatio-temporal correlation in sensor data induces data-redundancy. Also, the interaction between two communicating parties is well-known to reduce the communication complexity. This paper proposes a formalism that exploits these two opportunities to reduce the number of bits transmitted by a sensor node in a cluster, hence enhancing its lifetime. We argue that our approach has several inherent advantages in scenarios where the sensor nodes are acutely energy and computing-power constrained, but the base-station is not so. This provides us an opportunity to develop communication protocols, where most of the computing and communication is done by the base-station. The proposed framework casts the sensor nodes and base-station communication problem as the problem of multiple informants with correlated information communicating with a recipient and attempts to extend extant work on interactive communication between an informant-recipient pair to such scenarios. Our work makes four major contributions. Firstly, we explicitly show that in such scenarios interaction can help in reducing the communication complexity. Secondly, we show that the order in which the informants communicate with the recipient may determine the communication complexity. Thirdly, we provide the framework to compute the $m$-message communication complexity in such scenarios. Lastly, we prove that in a typical sensor network scenario, the proposed formalism significantly reduces the communication and computational complexities.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure. Minor revision: fixed a couple of typo

Secure Analog Network Coding in Layered Networks

We consider a class of Gaussian layered networks where a source communicates with a destination through $L$ intermediate relay layers with $N$ nodes in each layer in the presence of a single eavesdropper which can overhear the transmissions of the nodes in any one layer. The problem of maximum secrecy rate achievable with analog network coding for a unicast communication over such layered wireless relay networks with directed links is considered. A relay node performing analog network coding scales and forwards the signals received at its input. The key contribution of this work is a lemma that provides the globally optimal set of scaling factors for the nodes that maximizes the end-to-end secrecy rate for a class of layered networks. We also show that in the high-SNR regime, ANC achieves secrecy rates within a constant gap of the cutset upper bound on the secrecy capacity. To the best of our knowledge, this work offers the first characterization of the performance of secure ANC in multi-layered networks in the presence of an eavesdropper.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1607.0018

Coding, Scheduling, and Cooperation in Wireless Sensor Networks

We consider a single-hop data gathering sensor cluster consisting of a set of sensors that need to transmit data periodically to a base-station. We are interested in maximizing the lifetime of this network. Even though the setting of our problem is very simple, it turns out that the solution is far from easy. The complexity arises from several competing system-level opportunities available to reduce the energy consumed in radio transmission. First, sensor data is spatially and temporally correlated. Recent advances in distributed source-coding allow us to take advantage of these correlations to reduce the number of transmitted bits, with concomitant savings in energy. Second, it is also well-known that channel-coding can be used to reduce transmission energy by increasing transmission time. Finally, sensor nodes are cooperative, unlike nodes in an ad hoc network that are often modeled as competitive, allowing us to take full advantage of the first two opportunities for the purpose of maximizing cluster lifetime. In this paper, we pose the problem of maximizing lifetime as a max-min optimization problem subject to the constraint of successful data collection and limited energy supply at each node. By introducing the notion of instantaneous decoding, we are able to simplify this optimization problem into a joint scheduling and time allocation problem. We show that even with our ample simplification, the problem remains NP-hard. We provide some algorithms, heuristics and insight for various scenarios. Our chief contribution is to illustrate both the challenges and gains provided by joint source-channel coding and scheduling.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Worst-case Compressibility of Discrete and Finite Distributions

In the worst-case distributed source coding (DSC) problem of [1], the smaller cardinality of the support-set describing the correlation in informant data, may neither imply that fewer informant bits are required nor that fewer informants need to be queried, to finish the data-gathering at the sink. It is important to formally address these observations for two reasons: first, to develop good worst-case information measures and second, to perform meaningful worst-case information-theoretic analysis of various distributed data-gathering problems. Towards this goal, we introduce the notions of bit-compressibility and informant-compressibility of support-sets. We consider DSC and distributed function computation problems and provide results on computing the bit- and informant- compressibilities regions of the support-sets as a function of their cardinality.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Worst-case Asymmetric Distributed Source Coding

We consider a worst-case asymmetric distributed source coding problem where an information sink communicates with $N$ correlated information sources to gather their data. A data-vector $\bar{x} = (x_1, ..., x_N) \sim {\mathcal P}$ is derived from a discrete and finite joint probability distribution ${\mathcal P} = p(x_1, ..., x_N)$ and component $x_i$ is revealed to the $i^{\textrm{th}}$ source, $1 \le i \le N$. We consider an asymmetric communication scenario where only the sink is assumed to know distribution $\mathcal P$. We are interested in computing the minimum number of bits that the sources must send, in the worst-case, to enable the sink to losslessly learn any $\bar{x}$ revealed to the sources. We propose a novel information measure called information ambiguity to perform the worst-case information-theoretic analysis and prove its various properties. Then, we provide interactive communication protocols to solve the above problem in two different communication scenarios. We also investigate the role of block-coding in the worst-case analysis of distributed compression problem and prove that it offers almost no compression advantage compared to the scenarios where this problem is addressed, as in this paper, with only a single instance of data-vector.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure

Network Simplification for Secure AF Relaying

We consider a class of Gaussian layered networks where a source communicates with a destination through L intermediate relay layers with N nodes in each layer in the presence of a single eavesdropper which can overhear the transmissions of the nodes in the last layer. For such networks we address the question: what fraction of maximum secure achievable rate can be maintained if only a fraction of available relay nodes are used in each layer? In particular, we provide upper bounds on additive and multiplicative gaps between the optimal secure AF when all N relays in each layer are used and when only k, 1 <= k < N, relays are used in each layer. We show that asymptotically (in source power), the additive gap increases at most logarithmically with ratio N/k and L, and the corresponding multiplicative gap increases at most quadratically with ratio N/k and L. To the best of our knowledge, this work offers the first characterization of the performance of network simplification in layered amplify-and-forward relay networks in the presence of an eavesdropper.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1204.215

Energy- and Spectral- Efficiency Tradeoff for D2D-Multicasts in Underlay Cellular Networks

Underlay in-band device-to-device (D2D) multicast communication, where the same content is disseminated via direct links in a group, has the potential to improve the spectral and energy efficiencies of cellular networks. However, most of the existing approaches for this problem only address either spectral efficiency (SE) or energy efficiency (EE). We study the tradeoff between SE and EE in a single cell D2D integrated cellular network, where multiple D2D multicast groups (MGs) may share the uplink channel with multiple cellular users (CUs). We formulate the EE maximization problem with constraint on SE and maximum available transmission power. A power allocation algorithm is proposed to solve this problem and its efficacy is demonstrated via extensive numerical simulations. The tradeoff between SE and EE as a function of density of D2D MGs, and maximum transmission power of a MG is characterized.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Distributed Function Computation in Asymmetric Communication Scenarios

We consider the distributed function computation problem in asymmetric communication scenarios, where the sink computes some deterministic function of the data split among N correlated informants. The distributed function computation problem is addressed as a generalization of distributed source coding (DSC) problem. We are mainly interested in minimizing the number of informant bits required, in the worst-case, to allow the sink to exactly compute the function. We provide a constructive solution for this in terms of an interactive communication protocol and prove its optimality. The proposed protocol also allows us to compute the worst-case achievable rate-region for the computation of any function. We define two classes of functions: lossy and lossless. We show that, in general, the lossy functions can be computed at the sink with fewer number of informant bits than the DSC problem, while computation of the lossless functions requires as many informant bits as the DSC problem.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 2 table