A distributed detection scheme where the sensors transmit with constant
modulus signals over a Gaussian multiple access channel is considered. The
deflection coefficient of the proposed scheme is shown to depend on the
characteristic function of the sensing noise and the error exponent for the
system is derived using large deviation theory. Optimization of the deflection
coefficient and error exponent are considered with respect to a transmission
phase parameter for a variety of sensing noise distributions including
impulsive ones. The proposed scheme is also favorably compared with existing
amplify-and-forward and detect-and-forward schemes. The effect of fading is
shown to be detrimental to the detection performance through a reduction in the
deflection coefficient depending on the fading statistics. Simulations
corroborate that the deflection coefficient and error exponent can be
effectively used to optimize the error probability for a wide variety of
sensing noise distributions.Comment: 30 pages, 12 figure