An Energy-Efficient Ordered Transmission-based Sequential Estimation

Estimation problems in wireless sensor networks typically involve gathering and processing data from distributed sensors to infer the state of an environment at the fusion center. However, not all measurements contribute significantly to improving estimation accuracy. The ordered transmission protocol, a promising approach for enhancing energy efficiency in wireless networks, allows for the selection of measurements from different sensors to ensure the desired estimation quality. In this work, we use the idea of ordered transmission to reduce the number of transmissions required for sequential estimation within a network, thereby achieving energy-efficient estimation. We derive a new stopping rule that minimizes the number of transmissions while maintaining estimation accuracy similar to general sequential estimation with unordered transmissions. Moreover, we derive the expected number of transmissions required for both general sequential estimation with unordered transmissions and proposed sequential estimation with ordered transmissions and make a comparison between the two systems. Simulation results indicate that our proposed scheme can efficiently reduce transmissions while still ensuring the quality of estimation.