Formulation of a generalised switching CFAR with application to X-band maritime surveillance radar

Abstract

A generalisation of a switching based detector is examined, allowing the construction of such detectors for target detection in any clutter model of interest. Such detectors are important in radar signal processing because they are robust solutions to the management of interference. Although formulated in general terms, the theory is applied to the design of a switching constant false alarm rate detector for X-band maritime surveillance radar. It is shown that such a detector manages the problem of interference better than standard detection processes.