Decentralized Multihypothesis Sequential Detection

Abstract

This article is concerned with decentralized sequential testing of multiple hypotheses. In a sensor network system with limited local memory, raw observations are observed at the local sensors, and quantized into binary sensor messages that are sent to a fusion center, which makes a final decision. It is assumed that the raw sensor observations are distributed according to a set of M>=2 specified distributions, and the fusion center has to utilize quantized sensor messages to decide which one is the true distribution. Asymptotically Bayes tests are offered for decentralized multihypothesis sequential detection by combining three existing methodologies together: tandem quantizers, unambiguous likelihood quantizers, and randomized quantizers.