K-distributed sea clutter: performance predictions made easy

The compound-K description of sea clutter is summarized. Required threshold powers, for fixed-threshold and ideal CFARs, and for the clutter-noise transition region, are parameterized accurately. An approximation for Swerling 2 targets is presented, which simplifies performance prediction equations. A method for estimating CFAR loss due to v-estimation error is developed. An efficient algorithm for generating samples that are approximately gamma-distributed is presented.