Abstract

S. Marano, V. Matta, P. Willett and L. Tong
"DOA Estimation via a Network of Dumb Sensors Under the SENMA Paradigm"
Submitted to IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

Following the SENMA concept, we consider a wireless network of very dumb and cheap
sensors, polled by a travelling "rover". Sensors are randomly placed on acertain area,
and isotropic: they cannot resolve the direction of arrival (DOA) of an acoustic wave.
However, they observe the wavefront at different times. We assume that the communication
load must be as limited as possible, so that these times cannot be communicated to the
rover. Notwithstanding the lack of transmission of arrival times and the lack of DOA
resolution ability of the ability of the individual sensors, DOA estimation is possible,
simple, and asymptotic efficiency becomes closely approximated after a reasonable number
of rover snapshots. Key features are the directionality of the rover antenna, its visible
region, and the average number of sensors inside that, as accorded a Poisson distribution.