Decision Fusion in Space-Time Spreading aided Distributed MIMO WSNs

In this letter, we propose space-time spreading (STS) of local sensor decisions before reporting them over a wireless multiple access channel (MAC), in order to achieve flexible balance between diversity and multiplexing gain as well as eliminate any chance of intrinsic interference inherent in MAC scenarios. Spreading of the sensor decisions using dispersion vectors exploits the benefits of multi-slot decision to improve low-complexity diversity gain and opportunistic throughput. On the other hand, at the receive side of the reporting channel, we formulate and compare optimum and sub-optimum fusion rules for arriving at a reliable conclusion.Simulation results demonstrate gain in performance with STS aided transmission from a minimum of 3 times to a maximum of 6 times over performance without STS.