Optimal design of a threshold system based detector

In this paper, we address the optimal design for a signal detection scheme based on threshold system. First, a novel indicator of the detection performance is proposed. With the help of this indicator, the optimal threshold and the optimal structure can be determined efficiently. An optimal threshold detector (TD) is then constructed based on both the optimal threshold and the optimal structure. For signal detection in non-Gaussian noise with heavy pdf tails, we show that the proposed TD can have a performance very close to the optimal detection and provide significant improvement over the linear matched filter. In addition, the proposed TD is robust to the noise change.