Robust and adaptive diffusion-based classification in distributed networks

Distributed adaptive signal processing and communication networking are rapidly advancing research areas which enable new and powerful signal processing tasks, e.g., distributed speech enhancement in adverse environments. An emerging new paradigm is that of multiple devices cooperating in multiple tasks (MDMT). This is different from the classical wireless sensor network (WSN) setup, in which multiple devices perform one single joint task. A crucial first step in order to achieve a benefit, e.g., a better node-specific audio signal enhancement, is the common unique labeling of all relevant sources that are observed by the network. This challenging research question can be addressed by designing adaptive data clustering and classification rules based on a set of noisy unlabeled sensor observations. In this paper, two robust and adaptive distributed hybrid classification algorithms are introduced. They consist of a local clustering phase that uses a small part of the data with a subsequent, fully distributed on-line classification phase. The classification is performed by means of distance-based similarity measures. In order to deal with the presence of outliers, the distances are estimated robustly. An extensive simulation-based performance analysis is provided for the proposed algorithms. The distributed hybrid classification approaches are compared to a benchmark algorithm where the error rates are evaluated in dependence of different WSN parameters. Communication cost and computation time are compared for all algorithms under test. Since both proposed approaches use robust estimators, they are, to a certain degree, insensitive to outliers. Furthermore, they are designed in a way that they are applicable to on-line classification problems.