Fusion of Decisions in Censored Wireless Sensor Networks with Multi-Hop Transmission Strategy

Detection fusion rules for censored wireless sensor networks(WSNs) with multi-hop transmission strategy in fading channel are investigated in this paper. The optimal fusion rule is derived under the assumption of Rayleigh fading channel model. However, the optimal fusion rule required the instantaneous channel state information which is difficult to obtain under resource-constrained WSNs, so a sub-optimal fusion rule based on the knowledge of channel statistics is proposed. In addition, when the channel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is low, the reduced form is also derived. Theoretical analysis and simulations show that the sub-optimal fusion rules need much less computation and information, yet exhibit only slight performance degradation. The sub-optimal fusion rules are practicable for detection fusion system under multi-hop censored WSNs.