Information-Theoretic Integration of Sensing and Communication for Active Robot Networks

This paper presents an information-theoretic approach to sensor placement that incorporates communication capacity into an optimal formulation. A new formulation is presented that maximizes the information rate achievable by a set of sensors communicating wirelessly to a single collection node. Shannon capacity and the standard radio propagation model are used to model the throughput achievable by a sensor configuration. Likewise, the d-optimality criterion from the active sensing literature is used to model information gain provided by range and bearing sensors. The combination of information-theoretic measures leads to a metric equivalent to the expected information rate achievable by the system. Sensor positions are selected that optimize this measure.