On the Limitations of Random Sensor Placement for Distributed Signal Detection

We consider the design of a sensor network for detecting an emitter which if present is known to be located in an interval but whose exact position is unknown. We seek to minimize the total system power consumption subject to detection performance constrains by carefully choosing the thresholds and positions of the sensors. Toward this goal, we propose an iterative algorithm for the optimization problem. Numerical results are given to provide insights into the design of such networks. We show that random sensor placement can perform poorly, in contrast to what many currently believe.