Bounds on Multiple Sensor Fusion

Abstract: We consider the problem of fusing measurements from multiple sensors, where the sensing regions overlap and data are non-negative---possibly resulting from a count of indistinguishable discrete entities. Because of overlaps, it is, in general, impossible to fuse this information to arrive at an accurate estimate of the overall amount or count of material present in the union of the sensing regions. Here we study the range of overall values consistent with the data. Posed as a linear programming problem, this leads to interesting questions associated with the geometry of the sensor regions, specifically, the arrangement of their non-empty intersections. We define a computational tool called the fusion polytope and derive a condition for this to be in the positive orthant thus simplifying calculations. We show that, in two dimensions, inflated tiling schemes based on rectangular regions fail to satisfy this condition, whereas inflated tiling schemes based on hexagons do.