Hyperplane-Based Vector Quantization for Distributed Estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper considers distributed estimation of a vector parameter in the presence of zero-mean additive multivariate Gaussian noise in wireless sensor networks. Due to stringent power and bandwidth constraints, vector quantization is performed at each sensor to convert its local noisy vector observation into one bit of information, which is then forwarded to a fusion center where a final estimate of the vector parameter is obtained. Within such a context, this paper focuses on a class of hyperplane-based vector quantizers which linearly convert the observation vector into a scalar by using a compression vector and then carry out a scalar quantization. It is shown that the key of the vector quantization design is to find a compression vector for each sensor.