Detection in distributed Rayleigh clutter

Abstract

This paper derives the Neyman-Pearson discrete-time detector for phase/amplitude coded radar signals in the presence of spatially-white distributed Rayleigh clutter. We consider processing of data records which are long relative to the pulse duration. A measure of the optimum detector's performance gain over that of a standard correlator is derived and calculated for several waveforms of practical interest. It is also shown that for the clutter-limited case that the detection performance in spatially-distributed Rayleigh clutter is virtually independent of waveform coding. This last result allows one to use this detector with a non-coded pulse radar and achieve similar detection performance to that of a pulse coded radar when all other parameters are held constant provided as the clutter dominates the noise.