Near-optimum coherent CFAR detection of radar targets in compound-Gaussian clutter with inverse Gaussian texture

Abstract This paper studies the design of efficient detector for radar targets in compound-Gaussian clutter with inverse Gaussian texture (CG-IG clutter). Due to inclusion of the modified Bessel function, the optimum coherent detector in CG-IG clutter cannot be easily implemented in radar systems. Through deriving the mathematical relationship between the shape parameters of the K and CG-IG distributions, the efficient α matched filter ( α -MF) detector in K-distributed clutter, is improved to realize the near-optimum detection with real-time and fast implementation in CG-IG clutter. The control parameter α in CG-IG clutter is calculated by a new formula. The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) property of α -MF and adaptive α -MF ( α -AMF) is proved in CG-IG clutter. Numerical results indicate that the α -AMF CFAR detector has almost the same detection performance as the adaptive optimum detector and outperforms the adaptive MF (AMF) and adaptive normalized MF (ANMF) in CG-IG clutter.