Evaluation of bistable systems for binary signal detection in symmetric non-Gaussian noise

For detecting binary signals in symmetric noise with unknown probability density functions (PDF), a nonlinear receiver is proposed based on the bistable systems with autoregressive models of order [AR(1)]. The bistable systems are utilized to pre-process the noisy observations ahead of the linear correlation (LC) detector. The permutations of the observations are utilized to bypass the design of the optimal LC vector which depends on the noise PDF. The detection performances, in the form of probabilities of error, in some non-Gaussian noise are evaluated versus the matched filter (MF) and Volterra filter (VF) through numerical simulations. The results show that the bistable receiver performs better than MF receiver when the noise deviates from Gaussian distribution, and seems more robust compared to the VF receiver. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.