Sensor selection schemes for consensus based distributed estimation over energy constrained wireless sensor networks

In the applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), sensor energy saving is essential to increase the life of sensor networks. In this paper, we consider the problem of performing consensus based estimation over energy constrained WSNs, in which energy is conserved by selecting only a subset of sensors to observe the state of the dynamical system at each time step. First, we derive a sufficient condition for the convergence of the state estimation covariance. Then we propose a sensor selection strategy to schedule sensors to measure the system state for next step with the goal of minimizing the state estimation error subject to sensor energy constraint. Finally, we provide some numerical examples to illustrate the performance and effectiveness of the proposed strategy.