Randomized detection and detection capacity of multidetector networks

Abstract: In this paper, we study the following detection problem. There are

n

detectors randomly placed in the unit square

S = l e f t [- f r a c 12, f r a c 12 i g h t]^{2}

assigned to detect the presence of a source located at the origin. Time is divided into slots of unit length and

D_{i} (t) i n 0, 1

represents the (random) decision of the

i^{m t h}

detector in time slot

t

. The location of the source is unknown to the detectors and the goal is to design schemes that use the decisions

{D_{i} (t)}_{i, t}

and detect the presence of the source in as short time as possible. We first determine the minimum achievable detection time

T_{c a p}

and show the existence of emph{randomized} detection schemes that have detection times arbitrarily close to

T_{c a p}

for almost all configuration of detectors, provided the number of detectors

n

is sufficiently large. We call such schemes as emph{capacity achieving} and completely characterize all capacity achieving detection schemes.

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