Decentralized detection in wireless sensor networks with channel fading statistics

Existing channel aware signal processing design for decentralized detection in wireless sensor networks typically assumes the clairvoyant case, that is, global channel state information (CSI) is known at the design stage. In this paper, we consider the distributed detection problem where only the channel fading statistics, instead of the instantaneous CSI, are available to the designer. We investigate the design of local decision rules for the following two cases: (1) fusion center has access to the instantaneous CSI; (2) fusion center does not have access to the instantaneous CSI. As expected, in both cases, the optimal local decision rules that minimize the error probability at the fusion center amount to a likelihood ratio test (LRT). Numerical analysis reveals that the detection performance appears to be more sensitive to the knowledge of CSI at the fusion center. The proposed design framework that utilizes only partial channel knowledge will enable distributed design of a decentralized detection wireless sensor system.