Depth-based method for target detection in noisy environments

In this paper we introduce a novel non-parametric depth-based method for the target detection problem in noisy environments under nominal signal-to-noise ratios. Specifically, a distributed sensor network comprised of multiple transceivers is considered. Each sensor is able to transmit and receive a single tone; which is passed to a super sensor where the data is formed into a multistatic response matrix via a pre-detection fusion algorithm. An algorithm is introduced for the determination of the presence of a target in the background medium. The detection performance versus signal-to-noise ratio is developed for a given false alarm rate and compared to a typical monostatic sensor. The depth-based method is shown to improve upon the performance of a single sensor by a considerable margin.