The Detection of Moderately-Fluctuating Rayleigh Targets

Pulse train detection of fluctuating targets whose coherence time is long compared to the time between pulses and short compared to the pulse train duration is compared for two systems: (1) a recursive digital optimal receiver operating in conjunction with a coherent pulse train transmitter, and (2) a good (but not optimal) receiver operating with a block coherent frequency-hopping transmitter. The equivalence of this type of problem to noise-in-noise detection problems is demonstrated, the performance relations for both systems are derived and comparisons are made.