We consider a network of single-antenna sensors that observe an unknown
deterministic parameter. Each sensor applies a phase shift to the observation
and the sensors simultaneously transmit the result to a multi-antenna fusion
center (FC). Based on its knowledge of the wireless channel to the sensors, the
FC calculates values for the phase factors that minimize the variance of the
parameter estimate, and feeds this information back to the sensors. The use of
a phase-shift-only transmission scheme provides a simplified analog
implementation at the sensor, and also leads to a simpler algorithm design and
performance analysis. We propose two algorithms for this problem, a numerical
solution based on a relaxed semidefinite programming problem, and a closed-form
solution based on the analytic constant modulus algorithm. Both approaches are
shown to provide performance close to the theoretical bound. We derive
asymptotic performance analyses for cases involving large numbers of sensors or
large numbers of FC antennas, and we also study the impact of phase errors at
the sensor transmitters. Finally, we consider the sensor selection problem, in
which only a subset of the sensors is chosen to send their observations to the
FC.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Signal
Processing, Apr. 201
