Modified Rao test for distributed target detection in interference and noise

Abstract

This paper studies the problem of adaptive detecting distributed targets embedded in structured interference and colored noise. The signal and interference are assumed to lie in two linearly independent subspaces with unknown coordinates. The relative parameter of the conventional Rao test contains only the signal coordinate, whereas it is modified to comprise both the signal and interference coordinates in this paper. This modified Rao test has the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property and the capability of interference rejection. Several numerical results show that this modified Rao test exhibits more reliable detection performance than the conventional Rao test; it also outperforms the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) in some scenarios.