Power Constrained Partially Coherent Distributed Detection Over Fading Multiaccess Channels

In this paper, we consider the problem of power constrained partially coherent distributed detection over fading multiaccess channels. The deflection coefficient maximization is used to optimize the performance of detectors. For a partially coherent distributed detection system, the phase synchronization is imperfect at the fusion center; the residual phase error is modeled by the Tikhonov probability distribution function. Two cases of the channel gain information are considered separately at the fusion center: one case with perfect channel gain [the corresponding method is referred to as partially coherent deflection coefficient maximization (PC-DCM)], the other case with statistical information of channel gain (the corresponding method is referred to as PC-DCM-CS, with CS being the abbreviation for “channel statistics”). We derive the closed-form solutions to the considered problems. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out to verify the performance of the proposed methods. Simulation results show that the newly proposed methods could significantly improve the detection performance of the fusion system under a low signal-to-noise ratio and low false alarm probability.