Networking of Sensors with Fixed Transmission Ranges: Distributed Data Processing over Graphs

In this letter, we address the data gathering problem in low-power wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with sensors of fixed transmission ranges. We model the NP-hard problem as an integer linear program that can be applied to networks of small sizes. Further, we propose a novel graphical model that apprehends the features of such networks, and design a polynomial-time approximation algorithm using the proposed graphical model for networks of large sizes. The performance is evaluated under data compaction strategies based on compressive sensing. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method over its peer protocols.