A time frequency approach to CFAR detection

Simultaneous analysis of signals in time and frequency domains is a standard approach in many signal processing applications including some detection. Parameters of clutter, noise and interference, and in some cases Doppler specifications, are the basis for most of current CFAR target detection techniques. When these parameters are unknown, most of current detection methods do not perform well. In this paper, a detection approach is introduced using time-frequency (TF) signal analysis. The method is non-parametric and by analysis of the spectrogram of the input, the presence of target signal is localized in time domain. Then, the signal detection is achieved using an adaptive thresholding.