A receive-coherent detector of moving target for airborne distributed coherent aperture radar in heterogeneous clutter

Abstract

Airborne Distributed Coherent Aperture Radar (ADCAR) is a novel institutional radar that can significantly improve target detection performance. However, the multiple transmit–receive configuration in airborne distributed radar systems always causes heterogeneous clutter. In this paper, we consider the signal model for airborne distributed radar systems in heterogeneous clutter and design a new Generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector based on Multiple transmit–receive pair clutter Subspace Projection (MSP) to achieve receive-coherent detection (RCD) for moving target. The GLRT is shown to be a constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detector, and the statistical analysis is given. The results are provided to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed receive-coherent detector (RCD-MSP-GLRT) in comparison with the traditional hybrid coherent detectors (HD-MSP-GLRT) and sample covariance matrix (SCM-type) detectors. The simulation experiments verify the statistical analysis given by theoretical analysis. In addition, further experiments indicate that when there is a slight mismatch in the detecting vector, the RCD-MSP-GLRT has a decent target detection performance in heterogeneous clutter and guarantees the stability of Target Coherent Parameters (TCPs).