美国军事部门越来越倾向于分布式传感的概念,即在一个地区分散布设大量小型传感器,组成由外部控制或自成系统的阵列。在无人值守地面传感器领域,以往和目前的大部分工作集中在灵巧传感器上,不认为功率和通信带宽是主要的限制。然而,1999年1月美国陆军研究实验室组织的战略评估工作组得出的结论是,对于许多应用(如战场监视、替代反步兵地雷的系统)来说,依靠大功率和通信的传感器是不切实际的, The U.S. military is increasingly leaning toward the concept of distributed sensing by scattering a large array of small sensors in an area to form an array of externally controlled or self-contained systems. In the field of unmanned ground-based sensors, much of the past and current work has focused on smart sensors and does not consider the power and communication bandwidth to be major limitations. However, the Strategic Assessment Working Group organized by the United States Army Research Laboratory in January 1999 concluded that for many applications (such as battlefield surveillance, an alternative to anti-personnel landmines), sensors that rely on high power and communication are not Practical,