Diversity order of joint detection in distributed radar networks

In recent work we introduced the notion of diversity in distributed radar systems and we evaluated the diversity order of fully distributed networks. Our long-term goal is to analyze the trade-off between distributed detection and detection using co-located antennas. In this paper, we extend our earlier analysis and we evaluate the diversity of joint detection for symmetric noise-limited systems. The Neyman-Pearson (NP) statistic for joint detection is shown to follow a Gamma distribution. We prove that the diversity order of large networks is on the order of radicK, thus outperforming the logarithmic diversity order of fully distributed detection. We finally provide simulations validating our theoretical analysis.