ON A NETWORK SENSING PROBLEM

Live traffic flow information can help improve the efficiency of a communication network. There are many ways available to monitor the traffic flow of a network. In this paper, we propose a very efficient monitoring strategy. This strategy not only reduces the number of nodes to be monitored but also determines the complete traffic information of the entire network using the information from the monitored nodes. The strategy is optimal for monitoring a network because it reduces the number of monitored nodes to a minimum. Fast algorithms are also presented in this paper to compute the traffic information for the entire network based on the information collected from the monitored nodes. The monitoring scheme discussed in this paper can be applied to the internet, telecommunication networks, wireless ad hoc networks, large scale multiprocessor computing systems, and other information systems where the transmission of information needs to be monitored.