Design of low-loss CFAR detectors

Abstract

Recently a method for detecting the presence of nonhomogeneity in constant false alarm rate (CFAR) reference windows using the rare event mean-to-mean ratio (MMR) test has been proposed. In this paper, an application of the MMR test to the design of new CFAR detectors is presented. A combination of the cell-averaging CFAR (CA-CFAR), MMR detector, and either ordered-statistic CFAR (OS-CFAR), smaller-of CFAR (SO-CFAR), or greater-of CFAR (GO-CFAR) is examined. A distinctive feature of the proposed combination is that the newly combined CFAR detectors have lower CFAR loss when operating on a homogeneous background while having the same robustness like those of the OS-, SO-, or GO-CFARs in the presence of interference.