Data collection in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) draws significant attention, due to emerging interest in technologies ranging from Internet of Things (IoT) networks to simple “Presence” applications, which identify the status of the devices (active or inactive). Numerous Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for WSN, which can address the challenge of data collection in dense networks, were suggested over the years. Most of these protocols utilize the traditional layering approach, in which the MAC layer is unaware of the encapsulated packet payload, and therefore there is no connection between the data collected, the physical layer and the signaling mechanisms. Nonetheless, in many of the applications that intend to utilize such protocols, nodes may need to exchange very little information, and do so only sporadically, that is, while the number of devices in the network can be very large, only a subset wishes to transmit at any given time. Thus, a tailored protocol, which matches the signaling, physical layer and access control to traffic patterns is required. In this work, we design and analyze a data collection protocol based on information theoretic principles. In the suggested protocol, the sink collects messages from up to $K$ sensors simultaneously, out of a large population of sensors, without knowing in advance which sensors will transmit, and without requiring any synchronization, coordination or management overhead. In other words, neither the sink nor the other sensors need to know who are the actively transmitting sensors, and this data is decoded directly from the channel output. We provide a simple codebook construction with very simple encoding and decoding procedures. We further design a secure version of the protocol, in which an eavesdropper observing only partial information sent on the channel cannot gain significant information on the messages transmitted or even which are the sources that sent these messages.

中文翻译：

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通过多址无线传感器网络进行有效的数据收集

由于对从物联网（IoT）网络到识别设备状态（活动或不活动）的简单“状态”应用程序等技术的兴趣日益浓厚，无线传感器网络（WSN）中的数据收集备受关注。多年来，提出了许多用于WSN的媒体访问控制（MAC）协议，这些协议可以解决密集网络中数据收集的挑战。这些协议中的大多数都利用传统的分层方法，其中MAC层不知道封装的数据包有效负载，因此收集的数据，物理层和信令机制之间没有连接。但是，在许多打算利用此类协议的应用程序中，节点可能只需要交换很少的信息，而只是偶尔地进行交换，也就是说，尽管网络中的设备数量可能非常大，但是只有一个子集希望在任何给定时间进行传输。因此，需要一种定制的协议，该协议将信令，物理层和访问控制与流量模式相匹配。在这项工作中，我们基于信息理论原理设计和分析数据收集协议。在建议的协议中，接收器从 $ K $ 从大量传感器中同时获取多个传感器，而无需事先知道将要传输的传感器，并且不需要任何同步，协调或管理开销。换句话说，接收器和其他传感器都不需要知道谁是主动传输的传感器，并且该数据是已解码直接从通道输出。我们提供了一种具有非常简单的编码和解码过程的简单代码本结构。我们进一步设计了该协议的安全版本，在该版本中，仅监听在通道上发送的部分信息的窃听者无法获得有关已发送消息的重要信息，甚至无法获得发送这些消息的源。