Performance analysis of some CFAR detectors in homogeneous and non-homogeneous Pearson-distributed clutter

Abstract

In this paper, we analyse the performance of the Greatest Of-Constant False Alarm Rate (GO-CFAR) and the Smallest Of (SO)-CFAR detectors in the presence of clutter environments whose amplitude statistics are modelled by the Pearson V distribution and where the clutter dominates the receiver noise. The performance of these detectors are evaluated both in homogeneous and non-homogeneous clutter. The non-homogeneity is modelled as a step function discontinuity in the reference window. The target in the test cell is assumed to fluctuate according to the Swerling I model. We derive closed form expressions for the probability of false alarm (Pfa) and the probability of detection (Pd) in homogeneous and non-homogeneous Pearson V distributed clutter. The comparison of the two detectors for a non-homogeneous clutter environment showed that the best false alarm rate performance at clutter boundary is obtained for the SO-CFAR detector when the test cell is in low level clutter, while the GO-CFAR detector exhibits better performance when the test cell is from the higher level clutter as expected.