For massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) distributed wireless sensor networks, this paper investigates the role of multi-antenna sensors in improving network perception performance. First, we construct a distributed multi-antenna sensor network based on massive MIMO. By using the anti-fading characteristics of multi-antennas, it is better to achieve accurate detection than the single-antenna sensor network. Based on this, we derive a closed-loop expression for the detection probability of the best detector. Then, we consider the case that the sensor power resources are limited, and thus we want to use finite power to achieve higher detection probability. For this reason, the power was optimized by the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Moreover, we also prove that only statistical channel state is needed in large-scale antenna scenarios, which avoid the huge overhead of channel state information. Finally, according to the simulation results, the multi-antenna sensor network has better detection performance than the single-antenna sensor network which demonstrates the improved performance of the proposed schemes and also validates the theoretical findings.
Keywords: Multi-antenna sensor; distributed signal detection; massive MIMO; wireless sensor network.