Network of sensors: acquisition probability

A network of sensors is considered one of the most attractive remote sensing technologies available at present. In the system under consideration a network of sensors and a remote base station communicate using optical wireless links. This is accomplished by a base station that acquires and identifies sensors using a unique subcarrier frequency. The sensors use an active retroreflector to communicate with the base station, which reduces the complexity, cost, and power consumption of the sensors. The base station employs an imaging receiver (detector matrix), in which signals arriving from different directions are detected by different pixels. The imaging receiver mitigates ambient light noise and interference between simultaneous uplink transmissions from different sensors, provided that the transmissions are imaged onto disjoint sets of pixels. We describe a scheme that allows simultaneous acquisition and identification of a sensor in a network by an imaging receiver. A probability model of erroneous acquisition of this scheme due to noise is derived. The model's results indicate that the matrix size, the signal, and the noise powers have the greatest influence in determining acquisition probability.