A modified permutation test for robust radar detection under nonhomogeneous and correlated clutter

A new radar detector is presented, named as ¿modified permutation test¿ (MPT) for the rest of the article. This detector is a modification of the classical ¿permutation test¿ (PT), based on the histogram of the PT statistic obtained with a fast permutation test algorithm (i.e. based on linear convolutions of histograms, corresponding to the realization of additions in the PT statistic), and a normalization of the decision statistic. The normalization parameters depend on the mean value and the standard deviation of the referred histogram. The new detector performs adequately under correlated and nonhomogeneous clutter. Furthermore, the MPT is much more robust than the PT, under correlated and/or nonhomogeneous clutter.