Performance of the adaptive generalised matched subspace constant false alarm rate detector in non-Gaussian noise: an experimental analysis

Abstract

The authors deal with the performance analysis of an adaptive version of the generalised matched subspace detector (GMSD) in compound-Gaussian clutter with unknown covariance matrix. The original GMSD was proposed to detect subspace signals in compound-Gaussian noise with known covariance matrix and ensures the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property. In real situations, this assumption is unrealistic, which means that the covariance matrix must be estimated from training data. The authors use a robust estimate of the covariance matrix called the fixed-point estimate, recently proposed in the literature. The performance of the obtained adaptive detector, in terms of CFAR behaviour and probability of detection, is evaluated in the presence of real sea clutter data, collected by the McMaster IPIX radar.