Equal Gain Combining Based Sub-optimum Posterior Noncoherent Fusion Rule for Wireless Sensor Networks

The maximum a-posteriori (MAP) noncoherent fusion rule has been introduced for the best noncoherent detection performance, however, which is prohibitively complex for widely practical applications. In this contribution, a novel noncoherent detector named equal gain combining aided sub-optimum MAP (EGC-SMAP) is employed for the fusion detection in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Explicate, our proposed EGC-SMAP fusion rule starts the detecting via EGC principle which shrinks the searching range. Then, the final decision is made by MAP fusion rule within the searching range. The novel EGC-SMAP fusion rule has two major advantages compared with the previous work. (1) It allows noncoherent detection, hence, the phase information of carrier is no longer required. As such, it is particularly suitable for WSNs applications with severe resource constraints. (2) This EGC-SMAP fusion rule can be viewed as a combination of EGC and MAP fusion rules, which is capable of achieving various required detection performance as well as computation complexity via justifying the searching range.