A Hierarchical FOD Detection Scheme Based on Clutter Map CFAR and Pattern Classification

Abstract

The key issue that millimeter wave radar on airport using to detect foreign object debris (FOD) is to find stationary little targets in heavy ground clutter. In this paper we proposed a hierarchical FOD detection scheme using a novel pattern classification method for a 77GHz mm-wave radar system. Firstly, the heavy ground clutter is suppressed using traditional clutter map CFAR while some false alarms are detected with FOD returns. Then a wavelet decomposition based pattern classification method is proposed by which FOD returns and false alarms are categorized into different kinds. Experimental results based on measured data show that the proposed detection scheme can not only achieve good detection performance but also reduce the false alarm rate effectively.