Adaptive detectors with diagonal loading for airborne multi-input multi-output radar

The problem of adaptive target detection for airborne multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radars with space-time receivers in the presence of Gaussian interference (including clutter and noise) is studied. Previous work has assumed the interference covariance matrix to be known. The case with unknown covariance matrix is investigated here. By exploiting the low rank property of clutter subspace, generalised likelihood ratio test detector and adaptive matched filter detector with diagonal loading are suggested to improve the detection performance of MIMO radars in limited secondary data case. The closed-form detection probabilities and false alarm probabilities of the two proposed detectors are derived and numerically evaluated. Theoretical analysis and numerical results show the advantages of the proposed detectors.