  In this paper, a clustered wireless sensor network is considered that is
modeled as a set of coupled Gaussian multiple-access channels. The objective of
the network is not to reconstruct individual sensor readings at designated
fusion centers but rather to reliably compute some functions thereof. Our
particular attention is on real-valued functions that can be represented as a
post-processed sum of pre-processed sensor readings. Such functions are called
nomographic functions and their special structure permits the utilization of
the interference property of the Gaussian multiple-access channel to reliably
compute many linear and nonlinear functions at significantly higher rates than
those achievable with standard schemes that combat interference. Motivated by
this observation, a computation scheme is proposed that combines a suitable
data pre- and post-processing strategy with a nested lattice code designed to
protect the sum of pre-processed sensor readings against the channel noise.
After analyzing its computation rate performance, it is shown that at the cost
of a reduced rate, the scheme can be extended to compute every continuous
function of the sensor readings in a finite succession of steps, where in each
step a different nomographic function is computed. This demonstrates the
fundamental role of nomographic representations.
