Distributed detection using superposition signalling with fusion center diversity

In this paper, we propose to use superposition signaling in which all sensors are simultaneously operating and the aggregate of the sensors´ signals are acquired by the fusion center to increase communication rate compared to conventional signalling. In addition to superposition signaling, we also propose to employ multiple antennas at the fusion center to improve the data rate of the wireless sensor network further, which will be referred as fusion center diversity (FCD). We derive the optimal likelihood ratio test (LRT) based fusion rule for the superposition signaling with FCD. We finally quantify the detection performance of the optimal fusion rule of the superposition signaling with FCD with respect to the performance of the conventional signaling fusion rule. Simulation results suggest that the superposition signaling with FCD can provide up to 175% detection performance over the existing signaling fusion rule.