Optimal design and performance of distributed signal detection systems with faults

The design and performance of distributed signal detection systems with processor failures is presented. Using a general processor fault model, which also models an imperfect channel, the optimal design given prior failure probabilities is considered. The optimal design provides a performance bound for each system when failures may occur. It is shown that for general distributed systems, a likelihood ratio test is the optimal design for each local processor, provided failures are independent of the received observation vectors. The optimal design performs significantly better than the design that assumes no failures. It is shown that the fusion network performs better than a single centralized processor for many channels. This illustrates that, for the fusion network, the performance gained by decreasing the effect of failures outweighs the performance lost by distributing the processing. The serial network always performs worse than centralized; its performance is bounded as the number of channels increases