Sensing reality and communicating bits: A dangerous liaison - Is digital communication sufficient for sensor networks?

A structure-driven, end-to-end approach to the sensor problem is addressed. The goal is to show how the structure of the distributed sensing and communication problem dictates new processing architectures. The key challenges lies in the discretization of space, time, and amplitude. The general framework is discussed, outlining that while the temporal and spatial discretization can be understood from the same arguments as in the traditional signal processing applications, the situation is different for amplitude. The spatial structure of sensor data is discussed and the sufficiency of discrete-amplitude processing illustrated.