Optimal distributed decision fusion

The problem of decision fusion in distributed sensor systems is considered. Distributed sensors pass their decisions about the same hypothesis to a fusion center that combines them into a final decision. Assuming that the sensor decisions are independent of each other for each hypothesis, the authors provide a general proof that the optimal decision scheme that maximizes the probability of detection at the fusion for fixed false alarm probability consists of a Neyman-Pearson test (or a randomized N-P test) at the fusion and likelihood-ratio tests at the sensors     

Distributed decision fusion in the presence of link failures

The problem of optimal data fusion involving detector unit communication link failures is considered. Two strategies for decision making in presence of link failures are examined and an optimal decision making scheme in the sense of the Neyman-Pearson (N-P) test is proposed. The performance of q+1 reliable links versus q reliable links are examined theoretically, as well as, numerically using the receiver operating characteristics (ROCs)     

Nonstochastic adaptive decision fusion in distributed-detection systems

Implementing the optimal Neyman-Pearson (NP) fusion rule in distributed detection systems requires the sensor error probabilities to be a priori known and constant during the system operation. Such a requirement is practically impossible to fulfil for every resolution cell in a multiflying target multisensor environment. The true performance of the fusion center is often worse than expected due to fluctuations of the observed environment and instabilities of sensor thresholds. This work considers a nonparametric data fusion situation in which the fusion center knows only the number of the sensors, but ignores their error probabilities and cannot control their thresholds. A data adaptive approach to the problem is adopted, and combining P reports from Q independent distributed sensors through a least squares (LS) formulation to make a global decision is investigated. Such a fusion scheme does not entail strict stationarity of the noise environment nor strict invariance of the sensor error probabilities as is required in the NP formulation. The LS fusion scheme is analyzed in detail to simplify its form and determine its asymptotic behavior. Conditions of performance improvement as P increases and of quickness of such improvement are found. These conditions are usually valid in netted radar surveillance systems.     

Optimal serial distributed decision fusion

The problem of distributed detection involving N sensors is considered. The configuration of sensors is serial in the sense that the Jth sensor decides using the decision it receives along with its own observation. When each sensor uses the Neyman-Pearson test, the probability of detection is maximized for a given probability of false alarm, at the Nth stage. With two sensors, the serial scheme has a performance better than or equal to the parallel fusion scheme analyzed in the literature. Numerical examples illustrate the global optimization by the selection of operating thresholds at the sensors     

A new distributed constant false alarm rate detector

A new constant false alarm rate (CFAR) test termed signal-plus-order statistic CFAR (S+OS) using distributed sensors is developed. The sensor modeling assumes that the returns of the test cells of different sensors are all independent and identically distributed In the S+OS scheme, each sensor transmits its test sample and a designated order statistic of its surrounding observations to the fusion center. At the fusion center, the sum of the samples of the test cells is compared with a constant multiplied by a function of the order statistics. For a two-sensor network, the functions considered are the minimum of the order statistics (mOS) and the maximum of the order statistics (MOS). For detecting a Rayleigh fluctuating target in Gaussian noise, closed-form expressions for the false alarm and detection probabilities are obtained. The numerical results indicate that the performance of the MOS detector is very close to that of a centralized OS-CFAR and it performs considerably better than the OS-CFAR detector with the AND or the OR fusion rule. Extension to an N-sensor network is also considered, and general equations for the false alarm probabilities under homogeneous and nonhomogeneous background noise are presented.     

Explicit solutions for some simple decentralized detection problems

A decentralized detection problem is considered in which a number of identical sensors transmit a finite-valued function of their observations to a fusion center which makes a final decision on one of M alternative hypotheses. The authors consider the case in which the number of sensors is large, and they derive (asymptotically) optimal rules for determining the messages of the sensors when the observations are generated from a simple and symmetrical set of discrete distributions. They also consider the tradeoff between the number of sensors and the communication rate of each sensor when there is a constraint on the total communication rate from the sensors to the fusion center. The results suggest that it is preferable to have several independent sensors transmitting low-rate (coarse) information instead of a few sensors transmitting high-rate (very detailed) information. They also suggest that an M-ary hypothesis testing problem can be viewed as a collection of M(M-1)/2 binary hypothesis testing problems. From this point of view the most useful messages (decision rules) are those that provide information to the fusion center that is relevant to the largest possible numbers of these binary hypothesis testing problems     

一种分布式异步航迹融合算法

在多被动传感器目标跟踪中,融合中心处理的信息一般是同步的,然而实际情况并非如此。另外,一些被动传感器只能得到目标的方位信息,无法单独形成有效航迹,这就需要将各传感器数据同步到相同时刻,然后应用同步融合算法。针对被动传感器探测系统,采用传感器到传感器融合和系统到传感器融合的分布式融合结构,并对各局部传感器引入全局反馈,对相关信息采用协方差交叉算法进行处理,完成被动传感器异步数据的融合,仿真结果表明,该算法具有较好的融合效果。     

Censoring sensors: a low-communication-rate scheme for distributeddetection

We consider a new scheme for distributed detection based on a “censoring” or “send/no-send” idea. The sensors are assumed to “censor” their observations so that each sensor sends to the fusion center only “informative” observations, and leaves those deemed “uninformative” untransmitted. The main result of this work is that with conditionally independent sensor data and under a communication rate constraint, in order to minimize the probability of error, transmission should occur if and only if the local likelihood ratio value observed by the sensor does not fall in a certain single interval. Similar results are derived from Neymarr-Pearson and distance-measure viewpoints. We also discuss simplifications for the most interesting case that the fusion center threshold is high and the communication constraint is severe. We compare censoring with the more common binary-transmission framework and observe its considerable decrease in communication needs. Finally, we explore the use of feedback to achieve optimal performance with very little communication     

Local SNR considerations in decentralized CFAR detection

We consider the decentralized detection problem, involving N sensors and a central processor, in which the sensors transmit unquantized data to the fusion center. Assuming a homogeneous background for constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) analysis, we obtain the performances of the system for the Swerling I and Swerling III target models. We demonstrate that a simple nonparametric fusion rule at the central processor is sufficient for nearly optimum performance. The effect of the local signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) on the performances of the optimum detector and two suboptimum detectors is also examined. Finally, we obtain a set of conditions, related to the SNRs, under which better performance may be obtained by using decentralized detection as compared with centralized detection     

Decision fusion rules in multi-hop wireless sensor networks

The decision fusion problem for a wireless sensor network (WSN) operating in a fading environment is considered. In particular, we develop channel-aware decision fusion rules for resource-constrained WSNs where binary decisions from local sensors may need to be relayed through multi-hop transmission in order to reach a fusion center. Each relay node employs a binary relay scheme whereby the relay output is inferred from the channel impaired observation received from its source node. This estimated binary decision is subsequently transmitted to the next node until it reaches the fusion center. Under a flat fading channel model, we derive the optimum fusion rules at the fusion center for two cases. In the first case, we assume that the fusion center has knowledge of the fading channel gains at all hops. In the second case, we assume a Rayleigh fading model, and derive fusion rules utilizing only the fading channel statistics. We show that likelihood ratio (LR) based optimum decision fusion statistics for both cases reduce to respective simple linear test statistics in the low channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. These suboptimum detectors are easy to implement and require little a priori information. Performance evaluation, including a study of the robustness of the fusion statistics with respect to unknown system parameters, is conducted through simulations.     

Performance limits of track-to-track fusion versus centralized estimation: theory and application [sensor fusion]

Track-to-track fusion is an important part in distributed multisensor-multitarget tracking. The centralized and distributed tracking configurations were studied in (H.Chen et al., Proc. of SPIE Conf. on Signal and Data Processing of Small Targets, vol. 4048, 2000) using simulated air-to-air scenarios, and in (K.C. Chang, et al, IEEE Transact. on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 1271-1276, 1997) with analytical results based on /spl alpha/-/spl beta/ filters. The current work generalizes the results in the latter to the cases with more than 2 sensors. As the number of sensors increases, the performance of the distributed tracker is shown to degrade compared with the centralized estimation even when the optimal track-to-track fusion is used. An approximate track-to-track fusion is presented and compared with the optimal track-to-track fusion with performance curves for various numbers of sensors. These performance curves can be used in designing a fusion system where certain trade-offs need to be considered. Finally, these results are compared with simulation results for a realistic air-to-air encounter scenario.     

非线性系统中多传感器目标跟踪融合算法研究

 研究了在非线性系统中 ,基于转换坐标卡尔曼滤波器的多传感器目标跟踪融合算法。通过分析得出 :在非线性系统的多传感器目标跟踪中 ,基于转换坐标卡尔曼滤波器 ( CMKF)的分布融合估计基本可以重构中心融合估计。仿真实验也证明了此结论。由此可见分布的 CMKFA是非线性系统中较优的分布融合算法     

Optimal and self-tuning information fusion Kalman multi-step predictor

Based on the optimal fusion algorithm weighted by matrices in the linear minimum variance (LMV) sense, a distributed optimal information fusion for the steady-state Kalman multi-step predictor is given for discrete linear stochastic control systems with multiple sensors and correlated noises, where the same sample period is assumed. When the noise statistics information is unknown, the distributed information fusion estimators for the noise statistics parameters are presented based on the correlation functions and the weighting average approach. Further, a self-tuning information fusion multi-step predictor is obtained. It has a two-stage fusion structure. The first-stage fusion is to obtain the fused noise statistics information. The second-stage fusion is to obtain the fused multi-step predictor. A simulation example shows the effectiveness.     

Optimal Detection and Performance of Distributed Sensor Systems

Global optimization of a distributed sensor detection system withfusion is considered, where the fusion rule and local detectors aresolved to obtain overall optimal performance. This yields coupledequations for the local detectors and the fusion center.The detection performance of the distributed system with fusionis developed. The globally optimal system performance is comparedwith two suboptimal systems. Receiver operating characteristics(ROCs) are computed numerically for the problem of detecting aknown signal embedded in non-Gaussian noise.     

Optimum multisensor fusion of correlated local decisions

A distributed detection system consisting of a number of local detectors and a fusion center is considered. Each detector makes a decision for the underlying binary hypothesis testing problem based on its own observation and transmits its decision to the fusion center where the global decision is derived. The local decision rules are assumed to be given, but the local decisions are correlated. The correlation is generally characterized by a finite number of conditional probabilities. The optimum decision fusion rule in the Neyman-Pearson sense is derived and analyzed. The performance of the distributed detection system versus the degree of correlation between the local decisions is analyzed for a correlation structure that can be indexed by a single parameter. System performance as well as the performance advantage of using a larger number of local detectors degrade as the degree of correlation between local decisions increases     

The modeling and estimation of asynchronous multirate multisensor dynamic systems

An asynchronous data fusion problem based on a kind of multirate multisensor dynamic system is studied. The system is observed by multirate sensors independently, with the state model known at the finest scale. Under the assumption that the sampling rates of sensors decrease successively by any positive integers, the discrete dynamic system models are established based on each single sensor and an asynchronous multirate multisensor state fusion estimation algorithm is presented. Theoretically, the estimate is proven to be unbiased and the optimal in the sense of linear minimum covariance, the fused estimate is better than the Kalman filtering results based on each single sensor, and the accuracy of the fused estimate will decrease if any of the sensors' information is neglected. The feasibility and effectiveness of the algorithm are shown through simulations.     

Fusion of distributed extended forgetting factor RLS state estimators

For single-target multisensor systems, two fusion methods are presented for distributed recursive state estimation of dynamic systems without knowledge of noise covariances. The estimator at every local sensor embeds the dynamics and the forgetting factor into the recursive least squares (RLS) method to remedy the lack of knowledge of noise statistics, developed before as the extended forgetting factor recursive least squares (EFRLS) estimator. It is proved that the two fusion methods are equivalent to the centralized EFRLS that uses all measurements from local sensors directly and their good performance is shown by simulation examples.     

某型机载惯性/卫星/大气多信息融合MEMS航姿系统的设计与实现

针对机载MEMS航姿系统中器件精度低且易受干扰导致其姿态性能降低的问题,提出了一种基于大气/卫星信息辅助的航姿系统融合方案。构建了多源传感信息辅助下的综合航姿系统方案,所设计系统具有多种工作运行模式,可根据传感器可用状态实现滤波器的无缝切换,建立了组合导航系统状态和量测模型,采用Kalman滤波方法实现多源信息的融合与估计,并开展了原理样机的跑车试验。试验结果表明,所设计的融合方案能有效保障航姿系统的可靠性与精度,具有较高的工程应用价值。     

Remote data sensing using SAR and harmonic reradiators

In sensor networks distributed over large areas, communication by means of active transmitters on sensor nodes is inherently energy expensive and poses a significant bottleneck to achieve a long battery life. We propose modulated reradiation of radar illumination as a means to transmit information from a group of sensors to an airborne radar. This puts the communications energy burden on the radar transmitter rather than on the sensor nodes, thus increasing their battery lifetimes. To distinguish the sensor return from the clutter return, the modulation on the sensors is done by switching a nonlinear load on the sensor antenna and processing the harmonic reradiation. We present techniques to transmit information from the sensors, which use stripmap mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ideas to decode the information and to simultaneously obtain a geographic map of the sensor locations.     

多传感器决策融合系统中的决策空间优化划分研究

在假定各局部检测器的决策规则已经给定以及在Ｂｈａｔａｃｈａｒｙｙａ距离最大的意义下,对多传感器融合系统中的决策空间优化划分设计进行了研究。首先基于Ｂｈａｔａｃｈａｒｙｙａ距离准则,把对整个系统决策空间的优化划分解耦为分别对各局部检测器决策空间的优化划分;然后从理论上证明了这种划分设计在最大Ｂｈａｔａｃｈａｒｙｙａ距离意义下的最优性,以及这种基于最大Ｂｈａｔａｃｈａｒｙｙａ距离准则进行优化划分设计的合理性;最后,通过对瑞利起伏环境下信号检测融合问题的数值计算表明,本文方法的性能优于基于Ｊ－散度方法的性能。