Skip to main content
Article
Optimal Identical Binary Quantizer Design for Distributed Estimation
IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
  • Swarnendu Kar, Syracuse University
  • Hao Chen, Boise State University
  • Pramod K. Varshney, Syracuse University
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2012
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TSP.2012.2191777
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.

Citation Information
Swarnendu Kar, Hao Chen and Pramod K. Varshney. "Optimal Identical Binary Quantizer Design for Distributed Estimation" IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/hao_chen/46/