Performance aspects of decentralized detection structures

Performance aspects of minimum probability of error decentralized detection systems are considered. The relationship between the probability of error of a maximum a posteriori probability receiver and the Kolmogorov variational distance is derived. This relationship is used to derive the minimum probability of error for an n-sensor decentralized system in terms of the sensor decisions. A design procedure is presented that results in the optimum global minimum probability of error. The design of three suboptimum systems based on the Bharttacharyya distance, Kullback discrimination, and optimization of the probability of error at the local level is described. A numerical example comparing the performance of the optimum system to the performance of the suboptimum systems is also included