PARADIGM FOR DISTRIBUTED DETECTION UNDER COMMUNICATION CONSTRAINTS

We present a flexible hybrid decision scheme for decentralized detecti on under communication constraints. In this scheme, local sensors send a binary (hard) decision to the fusion center when the local sensors have a relatively high confidence in the decision, otherwise a perfect version of the local likelihood ratio (LLR) is sent. In practice, a f inely quantized version of the LLR is sent. The degree of confidence a t which this switch is made is determined by the specified communicati on constraint. The fusion center makes a final decision based on the i nformation received from local sensors. By employing the person-by-per son optimization methodology, we develop the local decision rules and the fusion rule. Owing to the associated computational difficulty, we propose a simpler procedure based on the class of Ali-Silvey distance measures to obtain the local decision rules. A numerical example is al so presented for illustration. (C) 1998 Society of Photo-Optical Instr umentation Engineers.