Development of an improved minimum order statistic detection process for Pareto distributed clutter

A simple modification of a minimum-based constant false alarm rate detector for Pareto clutter models is examined in this study. This has been motivated by the need to develop improved detection processes to operate in high grazing angle clutter as exemplified by returns acquired from the Defence Science and Technology Organisation´s Ingara radar. A minimum-based detector has the greatest resilience to clutter transitions and interfering targets. However, it has been shown recently that a minimum-based detector for the Pareto environment has a tendency to saturate. Using a simple transformation, progress is made towards the development of a useful incoherent detection scheme. Its performance is then analysed in both synthetic and real clutter.