Improved Variable Index constant false alarm rate radar processors

Abstract

In the cases when the statistical distribution of range return samples are not known, constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processors can be used. Cell Averaging (CA) CFAR radar processors which have the best performance in Gaussian homogeneous environments, exhibits performance degradation in the presence of an interfering target or in regions of abrupt change in the backround clutter power. The Greatest of (GO) CFAR radar processors are designed to control the false alarm rate, during the clutter power transition in the reference window (non-homogeneous clutter environment). The Smallest of (SO) CFAR radar processors improve detection performance when interfering targets exist in the environment but are unable to prevent excessive false alarm in non-homogeneous environments. Variable Index (VI) CFAR processors employs a composite approach based on CA-CFAR, SO-CFAR, GO-CFAR. Enhanced VI-CFAR (EVI-CFAR) radar processors proposed in this paper, shows performance improvement in different non-homogeneous environments when compared with VI-CFAR.