Adaptive Detection of Signals in Impulsive Noise Environments

A detector structure and an adaptive algorithm are proposed for the reception of signals in noise backgrounds possessing broad-tailed probability distributions typical of impulsive noise. The adaptive detector combines the best features of linear matched filtering and hard-limiting receiver structures resulting in a small-signal SNR performance which is an improvement over either of these detectors alone. Furthermore, the adaptive detector is relatively easy to implement and is shown to provide efficient and robust performance for a wide range of underlying noise distributions.