Performance assessment of CFAR processors in Pearson-distributed clutter

Author

Tsakalides, Panagiotis ; Nikias, C.L.

Author_Institution

VSLI Design Lab., Patras Univ., Greece

Volume

36

Issue

4

fYear

2000

fDate

10/1/2000 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1377

Lastpage

1386

Abstract

An analytical study on the performance of three existing classes of constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detectors operating in heavy tailed distributed data is presented. In particular, we study the performance of the cell averaging, order statistics, and p-percent truncated mean CFAR processors when the output measurements of the square-law detector can be modeled as positive alpha-stable (PαS) random variables with a shape parameter (characteristic exponent) equal to 0.5. We derive the exact expressions for the detection and false alarm probabilities of the detectors, and compare their performance by means of their corresponding receiver operating characteristics.

Keywords

higher order statistics; radar clutter; radar detection; radar theory; CFAR processors; Pearson-distributed clutter; Rayleigh clutter; cell averaging; heavy tailed distributed data; order statistics; p-percent truncated mean; performance assessment; positive alpha-stable random variables; receiver operating characteristics; shape parameter; signal power flow; square-law detector; Background noise; Clutter; Detectors; Frequency estimation; Probability; Radar detection; Random variables; Shape measurement; Statistical distributions; Working environment noise;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Aerospace and Electronic Systems, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9251

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/7.892685

Filename

892685