Counting the number of nodes in ocean wireless communication network

Abstract

It is often essential to estimate the number of operating nodes in a wireless communication network (WCN),in which the nodes are deployed in different forms to cover small or large areas of interest for a wide range of personal, scientific and commercial applications. The number of nodes may vary due to ad-hoc nature, power failure of nodes, or environmental disaster in a communication network, is important to estimate at any point in time for proper network operation and maintenance. Knowing the number is also essential for initial formation of the network at the time of deployment when it is unknown to all nodes. Counting the number is very important in useful data collection, network maintenance, node localization. Also network performance depends on the area node ratio i.e. the number of operating nodes per unit area. A statistical signal processing approach of node estimation is proposed in this paper. The nodes are considered as acoustic signal sources and their number is obtained through the cross-correlation of the acoustic signals received at two sensors in the network. The mean of the cross-correlation function is related with the number of nodes and used as the estimation parameter in the process. Theoretical and simulation results are provided which shows effectiveness of the signal processing approach instead of protocols in node estimation process.