Performance of CA-CFAR detectors in nonhomogeneous positive alpha-stable clutter

This paper studies the performance of a cell-averaging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) receiver that operates in a nonhomogeneous clutter environment with impulsive, heavy-tailed statistics. The clutter distribution is modeled by a positive alpha-stable distribution, which is described by the characteristic exponent α, where 0 <; α <; 1. Analytical expressions for the false alarm and detection probabilities are derived for arbitrary values of α assuming a nonhomogeneous clutter background. The analytical results are validated with computer simulation.