On Sensor Scheduling in Case of Unreliable Communication

This paper deals with the linear discrete-time sensor scheduling problem in unreliable communication networks. In case of the common assumption of an error-free communication, the sensor scheduling problem, where one sensor from a sensor network is selected for measuring at a specific time instant so that the estimation errors are minimized, can be solved off-line by extensive tree search. For the more realistic scenario, where communication is unreliable, a scheduling approach using a prioritization list for the sensors is proposed that leads to a minimization of the estimation error by selecting the most beneficial sensor on-line. To lower the computational demand for the priority list calculation, a novel optimal pruning approach is introduced.