Near-Optimal Source Placement for Linear Physical Fields

In real-word applications, signal processing is often used to measure and control a physical field by means of sensors and sources, respectively. An aspect that has been often neglected is the optimization of the sources' locations. In this work, we discuss the source placement problem as the dual of the sensor placement problem and propose two polynomial-time algorithms, for scenarios with or without noise. Both algorithms are near-optimal and indicate the possibility to make the control of such physical fields easier, more efficient and stabler to noise.