Distributed Detection in Sensor Networks with Limited Range Multi-Modal Sensors

Abstract: We consider a multi-object detection problem over a sensor network (SNET) with limited range multi-modal sensors. Limited range sensing environment arises in a sensing field prone to signal attenuation and path losses. The general problem complements the widely considered decentralized detection problem where all sensors observe the same object. In this paper we develop a distributed detection approach based on recent development of the false discovery rate (FDR) and the associated BH test procedure. The BH procedure is based on rank ordering of scalar test statistics. We first develop scalar test statistics for multidimensional data to handle multi-modal sensor observations and establish its optimality in terms of the BH procedure. We then propose a distributed algorithm in the ideal case of infinite attenuation for identification of sensors that are in the immediate vicinity of an object. We demonstrate communication message scalability to large SNETs by showing that the upper bound on the communication message complexity scales linearly with the number of sensors that are in the vicinity of objects and is independent of the total number of sensors in the SNET. This brings forth an important principle for evaluating the performance of an SNET, namely, the need for scalability of communications and performance with respect to the number of objects or events in an SNET irrespective of the network size. We then account for finite attenuation by modeling sensor observations as corrupted by uncertain interference arising from distant objects and developing robust extensions to our idealized distributed scheme. The robustness properties ensure that both the error performance and communication message complexity degrade gracefully with interference.