Effective Use of Channel Capacity in a Sensor Network

While Shannon information theory deals with the optimum coding of data in a bandwidth and signal to noise ratio (SNR) constrained communications channel, he provides no guidance on what data to transmit through the channel. With the increased demand for information from networked sensors, we propose the use of expected information value rate (EIVR) as the criterion to maximize the usage of the effective channel capacity in an information constrained channel. This criterion, utilizing the concepts of both situation information and sensor information, is able to determine which information to acquire as well as the sensor which has the best next collection opportunity to obtain that information.