Adaptive Detection of Range Migrating Target in non-Gaussian Clutter

Adaptive detection of fast moving targets by means of high range resolution radar is considered. It is assumed that a fast-moving target of interest has a few range cells migration during the coherent processing interval and the clutter power fluctuates rapidly along the range. Therefore, the target competes with the clutter responses in a few adjacent range cells, modeled by Compound-Gaussian process. The adaptive CFAR detector of range-migrating targets is designed and it is complemented by the algorithm for covariance matrix estimation from the reference data. The generalized approach for detection of range-extended migrating targets is provided. The performance of the proposed detectors is evaluated via numerical simulations, showing valuable improvement over the conventional techniques.