Performance off order-statistics CFAR detector with noncoherent integration in homogeneous situations

Abstract

The order-statistics (OS) constant-false-alarm-rate (CFAR) detector has been known to have a small loss in detection performance relative to the cell-averaging (CA) CFAR detector in homogeneous situations. However, it results in much less performance degradation in nonhomogeneous situations, i.e. the OS CFAR detector has significant performance gain over the CA CFAR detector in nonhomogeneous environments. In general, as the frequency diversity between noncoherent pulse bursts is prevalent in radar detection systems, detection analysis of the OS CFAR detector with noncoherent integration is needed. In the paper, for the chi-square family of fluctuating targets with an integer fluctuation parameter, the detection performance of the OS CFAR detector with noncoherent integration in homogeneous situations, is discussed.