Quantization in multisensor random signal detection

Optimum detection schemes based on quantized data are of great interest in radar and sonar applications. The design and properties of multisensor schemes are considered here for detection of weak random signals in additive, possibly non-Gaussian, noise. Signal-to-noise ratios are assumed unknown and the signals at the different sensors may be statistically dependent. Analytical expressions describing the best way to fuse the quantized observations for cases with any given observation sample size are provided. The best schemes for originally quantizing the observations are also studied for the case of asymptotically large observation sample sizes. These schemes are shown to minimize the mean-squared error between the best weak-signal test statistic based on unquantized observations and the best weak-signal test statistic based on quantized observations (under signal absent). Numerical results indicate it is sometimes best for each quantizer to use different size alphabets when a quantizer is located at each sensor