Error Probability Bounds for Binary Relay Trees with Crummy Sensors

We study the detection error probability associated with balanced binary relay trees, in which sensor nodes fail with some probability. We consider N identical and independent crummy sensors, represented by leaf nodes of the tree. The root of the tree represents the fusion center, which makes the final decision between two hypotheses. Every other node is a relay node, which fuses at most two binary messages into one binary message and forwards the new message to its parent node. We derive tight upper and lower bounds for the total error probability at the fusion center as functions of N and characterize how fast the total error probability converges to 0 with respect to N. We show that the convergence of the total error probability is sub-linear, with the same decay exponent as that in a balanced binary relay tree without sensor failures. We also show that the total error probability converges to 0, even if the individual sensors have total error probabilities that converge to 1/2 and the failure probabilities that converge to 1, provided that the convergence rates are sufficiently slow.

Error Probability Bounds for Balanced Binary Relay Trees

We study the detection error probability associated with a balanced binary relay tree, where the leaves of the tree correspond to $N$ identical and independent detectors. The root of the tree represents a fusion center that makes the overall detection decision. Each of the other nodes in the tree are relay nodes that combine two binary messages to form a single output binary message. In this way, the information from the detectors is aggregated into the fusion center via the intermediate relay nodes. In this context, we describe the evolution of Type I and Type II error probabilities of the binary data as it propagates from the leaves towards the root. Tight upper and lower bounds for the total error probability at the fusion center as functions of $N$ are derived. These characterize how fast the total error probability converges to 0 with respect to $N$, even if the individual sensors have error probabilities that converge to 1/2.