Detection Performance and Energy Efficiency of Sequential Detection in a Sensor Network

Wireless sensor networks with event detection mechanisms are considered. Based on a simplified sensor network model, a distributed sequential detection scheme is proposed and investigated. Optimal sequential decision rule is derived and its detection performance is compared with that of the non-sequential detection. Our results show that on average the sequential detection requires fewer measurements than the non-sequential detection to achieve the same detection accuracy. Furthermore, energy efficiency of the two schemes is compared, and distinctive performance for different values of system parameters is observed.