Data compression in emitter location systems via sensor pairing and selection

Data compression ideas can be extended to assess the data quality across multiple sensors to manage the network of sensors to optimize the location accuracy subject to communication constraints. From an unconstrained-resources viewpoint it is desirable to use the complete set of deployed sensors; however, that generally results in an excessive data volume. We have previously presented here results on selecting pre-paired sensors. We have now extended our results to enable optimal joint pairing/selection of sensors. Pairing and selecting sensors to participate in sensing is crucial to satisfying trade-offs between accuracy and time-line requirements. We propose two methods that use Fisher information to determine sensor pairing/selection. The first method optimally determines pairings as well as selections of pairs but with the constraint that no sensors are shared between pairs. The second method allows sensors to be shared between pairs. In the first method, it is simple to evaluate the Fisher information but is challenging to make the optimal selections of sensors. However, the opposite is true in the second method: it is more challenging to evaluate the Fisher information but is simple to make the optimal selections of sensors.