Energy-Efficient Quantization for Parameter Estimation in Inhomogeneous WSNs

The estimation of an unknown parameter using distributed measurements is an essential problem in many wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. In a WSN, the shortage of resources, specially the energy in the sensors, acts as a constraint on the design of estimation algorithms. The existing studies on this problem have developed algorithms that try to limit the total energy in the whole network, yet not considering each sensor's energy consumption individually. We develop an estimation algorithm for inhomogeneous environments considering the transmission load of individual sensors.