Unified fusion rule in multisensor network decision systems

In this paper, we present a unified fusion rule in distributed multihypothesis multisensor network decision systems, where communication pattern between sensors is given and fusion center can also observe data. Far the above decision networks, we propose a specific fusion rule, which is in fact of the most general form (i.e. other fusion rules are all its special cases) and independent of the statistical characteristics of observations and decision criteria. It is therefore called unified fusion rule of the decision network systems. To reach the globally optimal decision performance, people only need to optimize sensor rules under the unified fusion rule for given conditional distributions of observations and decision criterion. Computer simulations support the above results and show some guidance on how to assign sensors to nodes in a signal detection network with given communication pattern.