Energy-efficient detection system in time-varying signal and noise power

In many detection applications with battery powered or energy-harvesting sensors, energy constraints preclude the use of the optimal detector all the time. Optimal energy-performance trade-off is therefore needed in such situations. In many applications, the signal and noise power may vary greatly over time, and this can be exploited to constrain energy consumption while maintaining the best possible performance. A detector scheduling algorithm based on the signal and noise power information is developed in this work. The resulting algorithm is simple due to its threshold-test structure and can be easily implemented with almost no overhead. A detection system with two detectors using the proposed scheduling scheme is estimated to greatly reduce the energy consumption for a wildlife monitoring application.