Fusion of decisions transmitted over flat fading channels via maximizing the deflection coefficient

In this paper, we consider the design of the fusion rules for binary distributed detection systems in which the decisions made by the local sensors are sent to the fusion center (FC) over parallel flat-fading channels using onoff keying. For complexity concerns, we focus on the linear-combining fusion rules whose combining weights are chosen to maximize the deflection coefficient of the fusion statistic. Both coherent and noncoherent fusion rules are considered. The proposed fusion rules account for both the knowledge of the channels, which ranges from the instantaneous channel-state information (CSI) to the statistics of the fading envelopes, as well as the detection performance of local sensors. Simulation results show a robust detection performance over a variety of signal conditions.