One-channel networked data fusion with communication constraint

Multi-sensor data fusion over one channel is studied in this paper. The communication constraint considered here is medium access constraint. When the synchronous time division multiplexing (STDM) mechanism is used to address this problem, collective delay emerges. Collective delay time depends upon the channel capacity and traffic flow assigned to the communication channel, causing contradiction between traffic flow and delay time (the number of transmitted sensors and delay steps). A new model is developed that can truly reflect this contradiction by introducing a stochastic process θ. Based on the obtained system model, the optimal data fusion filter is designed. It also gives the upper bounds of the expected estimation error covariance and estimation error covariance with one-step delay. Two illustrative examples are given in the last section to show the influence of θ on estimation performance.