Analog signals picked up by sensors are oversampled and converted locally for example into streams of 1-bit digital words and, without any previous formatting are transmitted on transmission channels to a central station. The central station includes a storage and a combining circuit for combining and weighting directly these 1-bit words, as well as a filter for reconstituting, from the combinations, high-resolution digital words. A preferred application is combining of acoustic or seismic signals.
The sensor network described herein uses a distributed sigma-delta converter, where each of a plurality of sensor nodes includes a sigma-delta modulator communicatively coupled to a remotely located sigma-delta processor in a control hub. Each sensor node generates a serial bit stream representative of a sensor output signal. The control hub includes a plurality of signal processors, each of which receive and digitally process the serial bit stream wirelessly transmitted by a corresponding sensor node. A controller in the control hub analyzes the digital output from each signal processor to determine one or more characteristics of the sensor network.
