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Article
Optimal Identical Binary Quantizer Design for Distributed Estimation
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2012)
  • Swarnendu Kar, Syracuse University
  • Hao Chen, Boise State University
  • Pramod K. Varshney, Syracuse University
Abstract
We consider the design of identical one-bit probabilistic quantizers for distributed estimation in sensor networks. We assume the parameter-range to be finite and known and use the maximum Crameŕ–Rao lower bound (CRB) over the parameter-range as our performance metric. We restrict our theoretical analysis to the class of antisymmetric quantizers and determine a set of conditions for which the probabilistic quantizer function is greatly simplified. We identify a broad class of noise distributions, which includes Gaussian noise in the low-SNR regime, for which the often used threshold-quantizer is found to be minimax-optimal. Aided with theoretical results, we formulate an optimization problem to obtain the optimum minimax-CRB quantizer. For a wide range of noise distributions, we demonstrate the superior performance of the new quantizer—particularly in the moderate to high-SNR regime.
Keywords
  • distributed estimation,
  • dithering,
  • minimax CRLB,
  • probabilistic quantization
Publication Date
July 1, 2012
Citation Information
Swarnendu Kar, Hao Chen and Pramod K. Varshney. "Optimal Identical Binary Quantizer Design for Distributed Estimation" IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing Vol. 60 Iss. 7 (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/hao_chen/17/