Abstract

Cristian Budianu, Shai Ben-David, and Lang Tong
"Estimation of Number of Operating Sensors in Large-Scale Sensor Networks with Mobile Access"
Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing , June, 2004.
 
This paper investigates the estimation of the number of operating sensors in a sensor network in which the data collection is made by a mobile access point. We propose an estimator based on the Good-Turing estimator of the missing mass and generalize it to other related problems such as the estimation of the distribution of energy available at sensors. The estimator is analyzed using the theory of large deviations. We present closed-form bounds on the large deviation exponent and characterize confidence intervals for the estimator.