Coherent CFAR detection in compound Gaussian clutter with inverse gamma texture

Graham V Weinberg

doi:10.1186/1687-6180-2013-105

Abstract

Recent publications have explored coherent radar detection in a compound Gaussian clutter environment with inverse gamma texture, since the latter clutter model has been validated for X-band high-resolution maritime surveillance radar clutter returns. This paper explores the development of coherent constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detectors for this scenario. In the first instance, a detector is constructed with explicit knowledge of the clutter parameters. It is then shown that the probability of false alarm/threshold relationship does not vary with the clutter power. To achieve a CFAR detector, clutter parameter approximations are then introduced, and the cost associated with this is then analysed.

Highlights

The compound Gaussian clutter model has provided radar researchers and engineers with a mathematically tractable model for correlated non-Gaussian radar returns [1,2]
Coherent multilook radar detection in heavy-tailed compound Gaussian clutter is a topic of much interest in current signal processing research [2,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
The normalised matched filter (NMF) (7) is analysed since it is a special case of the detector (9), which has no requirement for Pareto clutter parameter estimation

Summary

Introduction

The compound Gaussian clutter model has provided radar researchers and engineers with a mathematically tractable model for correlated non-Gaussian radar returns [1,2]. Using an analysis as in the derivation resulting in (12), it can be shown that the probability of false alarm for this detector is given by the following: Lemma 4.1. The hope is that if the clutter parameter estimates are fairly accurate, there will neither be an increase in the desired false alarm probability nor a significant detection loss.

Results

Conclusion