Performance Evaluation of Energy Detectors

The prediction of energy detector performance requires a complicated calculation or a tedious manipulation of nomograms. For a large time-bandwidth product WT, however, it is commonplace to use the formula (E/No) = d¿WT to anticipate the required average input energy-to-noise spectral density ratio for a wanted signal detectability parameter d and thus avoid the computational difficulty. This paper proposes a modified formula (E/No) = ¿d¿WT that is applicable for all range of WT, where ¿ is the modification factor derived on an empirical basis. The Van Trees measure of the signal detectability parameter of the energy detector also is derived analytically and compared to the modified equation.