MIMO Over-the-Air Computation for Distributed Estimation

Abstract

MIMO over-the-air computation (MIMO-AirComp) is a recently proposed technique that leverages the superposition property of the multiple access channel to compute the target multifunction of various applications. This article presents how the MIMO-AirComp principle can be applied to the state estimation problem using distributed sensing data. The representative target function is explicitly formulated as a nomographic function matched to the structure of the multiple access channel with the proper processing function. The proposed framework efficiently computes the target multifunction by coordinating local preprocessing at each node, aggregation through the wireless channel, and postprocessing at the fusion center. We analyze and demonstrate that the proposed approach significantly improves the computation throughput for the distributed estimation application. Specifically, the proposed MIMO-AirComp framework outperforms the conventional separated communication and computation approach when the network system relies on noisy measurements obtained by the densely deployed sensors.

Keywords

• over-the-air computation
• MIMO
• distributed estimation