Fundamental Limits of Sensing Systems

Introduction

This project derives information-theoretic fundamental limits and tradeoffs of classical and quantum distributed sensing (detection and estimation) systems, which are key in the Industry 4.0, smart cities, environmental applications, autonomous vehicles, etc.

Objectives

Our limits will:

1. Serve as benchmarks for practical designs;
2. Characterize the inherent tradeoffs;
3. Provide engineering guidelines.

Challenges

So far, a technique is missing that can derive the limits of modern distributed sensing systems with:

• Multiple decision centers
• Multiple objectives
• Interactive and sequential behaviours

Quantum Sensing

For the emerging field of quantum sensing, even the limits of simple distributed systems have not been derived.

Methodology

With our recent converse proof technique (which already served to establish limits of detection, channel coding, and compression problems), we have a powerful tool for obtaining the desired strong or probability-of-error dependent converse proofs.