Optimal sensor rules and unified fusion rules for multisensor multi-hypothesis network decision systems with channel errors

In this paper, for general jointly distributed sensor observations, we present optimal sensor rules with channel errors for a given fusion rule. Then, the unified fusion rules problem for multisensor multi-hypothesis network decision systems with channel errors is studied as an extension of our previous results for ideal channels, i.e., people only need to optimize sensor rules under the proposed unified fusion rules to achieve global optimal decision performance. More significantly, the unified fusion rules do not depend on distributions of sensor observations, decision criterion, and the characteristics of fading channels. Finally, several numerical examples support the above analytic results and show some interesting phenomena which can not be seen in ideal channel case.