Performance comparison of multichannel energy detector output processing methods

In this paper we propose that Nuttall´s power-law statistic is used to combine channelized radiometer outputs. A simple way to determine the intercept receiver´s threshold is presented. It is based on approximating the decision statistic distribution in noise only case with a shifted log-normal distribution. This appears to be more precise than Gaussian approximation especially in the tails. Numerical results show that when time-frequency product of radiometer cells is small, the power-law based intercept receiver has good performance. When the time-frequency product is large, the sum-based receiver (sums thresholded radiometer outputs) has superior performance.