Design and Analysis of Distributed Radar Sensor Networks

In this paper, we design a network of distributed radar sensors that work in an ad hoc fashion, but are grouped together by an intelligent clusterhead. This system is named Radar Sensor Network (RSN). A RSN not only provides spatial resilience for target detection and tracking compared to traditional radars, but also alleviates inherent radar defects such as the blind speed problem. This interdisciplinary area offers a new paradigm for parallel and distributed sensor research. We propose both coherent and noncoherent RSN detection systems applying selection combination algorithm (SCA) performed by clusterhead to take the advantage of spatial diversity. Monte Carlo simulations show that proposed RSN can provide much better detection performance than that of single radar sensor for fluctuating targets, in terms of probability of false alarm and miss detection. We also analyze the impact of Doppler shift on both coherent and noncoherent RSN detection systems at the presence of clutter. The result is that the coherent system is more robust to the noncoherent RSN.