A CA-CFAR-Like Detector Using the Gerschgorin Circle Theorem for Bistatic Space Based Radar

The problem of the constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection of bistatic space based radar (B-SBR) is addressed under the background of strong and nonhomogeneous clutter. We propose a novel and simple cell averaging (CA)-CFAR-like (CA-CFAR-L) detection method based on the Gerschgorin circle theorem for B-SBR. First, we investigate the potential of a novel test statistic TCA-CFAR-L exhibiting better properties about discrimination and CFAR using the Gerschgorin circle theorem, and the test statistic TCA-CFAR-L is constructed as the ratio of the sum of the Gerschgorin radii of the covariance matrix of the cell under test to the sum of the Gerschgorin radii of the mean covariance matrix of the reference cells. Second, we investigate the CA-CFAR-L detector for B-SBR using the constructed test statistic TCA-CFAR-L. Under the background of the K-distribution clutter model and the clutter model for B-SBR, respectively, we verify the performance of the proposed CA-CFAR-L detector, the LE mean matrix CFAR detector and the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)–CFAR detector. Also, we analyze the experimental data for the IPIX radar. The simulation results and experimental data analysis demonstrate that the detection performance of the detector is better than the LE mean matrix CFAR detector and the FFT–CFAR detector, and the proposed method has less computational complexity. These will provide an important theoretical basis and new ideas for radar target detection in the future.