The performances of order statistic (OS) constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detectors are analyzed for non-Gaussian clutters modeled by heavy-tailed complex isotropic symmetric alpha-stable random processes whose amplitude is the generalized Rayleigh distribution. The detection and false alarm probabilities of the amplitude OS-CFAR detectors are presented assuming that the target signal is Rayleigh distributed. Exact closed-form solutions are derived for the special case of Cauchy-Rayleigh distribution where the characteristic exponent is 1. Numerical results are presented for detection and false alarm rates as functions of the generalized signal-to-noise ratio, reference window sizes, and rank order indexes. It is shown that the window size and rank order do not have significant effects on the performances. It is also shown that the amplitude detectors provide similar performances as the square-law detectors in the heavy-tailed clutter environment.

Date Published: 21 September 2007
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 6699, Signal and Data Processing of Small Targets 2007, 669904 (21 September 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.734355

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6699:
Signal and Data Processing of Small Targets 2007
Oliver E. Drummond; Richard D. Teichgraeber, Editor(s)