Energy Efficient Over-the-Air Computation for Correlated Data in Wireless Sensor Networks

Over-the-air computation (AirComp) enables efficient wireless data aggregation in sensor networks by simultaneous processing of calculation and communication. This paper proposes a novel precoding method for AirComp that incorporates statistical properties of sensing data, spatial correlation and heterogeneous data correlation. The design of the proposed precoding matrix requires no iterative processes so that it can be realized with low computational costs. Moreover, this method provides dimensionality reduction of sensing data to reduce communication costs per sensor. We evaluate performance of the proposed method in terms of various system parameters. The results show the superiority of the proposed method to conventional non-iterative methods in cases where the number of receive antennas at the aggregator is less than that of the total transmit antennas at the sensors.