Optimal Data Rate Allocation for Dynamic Sensor Fusion over Resource Constrained Communication Networks

We consider a dynamic sensor fusion problem where a large number of remote sensors observe a common Gauss-Markov process and the observations are transmitted to a fusion center over a resource constrained communication network. The design objective is to allocate an appropriate data rate to each sensor in such a way that the total data traffic to the fusion center is minimized, subject to a constraint on the fusion center's state estimation error covariance. We show that the problem can be formulated as a difference-of-convex program, to which we apply the convex-concave procedure (CCP) and the alternating direction method of multiplier (ADMM). Through a numerical study on a truss bridge sensing system, we observe that our algorithm tends to allocate zero data rate to unneeded sensors, implying that the proposed method is an effective heuristic for sensor selection.