Detection Performance of Or-ing Device with Pre- and Post-Averaging: Part II- Phase-Incoherent Signal

The detection performance of an or-ing device with pre-averaging and post-averaging has been determined in the form of numerous receiver operating characteristics covering a wide range of input signal-to-noise ratios. Numerical evaluation of the false alarm probability P(sub f) and detection probability P(sub d) has been conducted for the case of a phase-incoherent signal in the presence of additive Gaussian noise for a wide range of values of K, the amount of pre-averaging before or-ing; N, the number of channels or-ed; and M, the amount of post-averaging after or-ing. A MATLAB program that can be used to extend these results to parameter values outside the range studied here is also listed. The tradeoffs associated with switching from post-averaging to pre-averaging, or vice-versa, have been thoroughly investigated and tabulated for a standard operating point (P(sub f) = 1E-3, P(sub d) = 0.5) and for a high-quality operating point (P(sub f) = 1E-6, P(sub d) = 0.9). The losses associated with doing too little pre-averaging can be severe, especially for large numbers, N, of or-ed channels.