Operating Characteristics for Indicator Or-ing of Incoherently Combined Matched-Filter Outputs

Abstract

Abstract : The false alarm and detection probabilities for a processor that incoherently combines M matched filter outputs and then subjects these summed quantities to or-ing amongst N channels are derived for general M, N, and signal-to-noise ratios. A probability of correct detection occurs only when the signal channel output exceeds a threshold and all other noise channel outputs. Receiver operating characteristics are plotted for the 40 possible combinations of M = 1(1) 10 with N = 1, 10, 100, 1000, for signal-to-noise ratios ranging over values diverse enough to cover false-alarm, detection probability pairs from (.01, .5) to (1E-10, .999). Also, the required signal-to-noise ratio to realize specified false alarm and detection probabilities are plotted versus N, for several values of M. Keywords include: Operating characteristics, Indicator Or-ing, Matched filters, Incoherent combination, Detection probability, and False alarm probability.