Generalized Closed-Form Expressions for CFAR Detection in Heterogeneous Environment

• Published in: IEEE geoscience and remote sensing letters Vol. 15; no. 7; pp. 1011 - 1015
• Main Authors: Abbadi, Ali, Bouhedjeur, Hamza, Bellabas, Ahcene, Menni, Tarek, Soltani, Faouzi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.07.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Adaptive thresholding; Closed-form solutions; Clutter; Constant false alarm rate; constant false alarm rate (CFAR); Detection; Detectors; False alarms; Optimized production technology; Performance evaluation; Probability; Probability theory; Radar detection; second-order statistics; Sensors; Signal to noise ratio; Statistical analysis; Statistical methods; Target detection
• ISSN: 1545-598X; 1558-0571
• DOI: 10.1109/LGRS.2018.2822782

The purpose of this letter is the derivation of generalized closed forms of the probability of detection (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{d} </tex-math></inline-formula>) and the probability of false alarm (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{\text {fa}} </tex-math></inline-formula>) governing the statistical detection of targets in heterogeneous environment. Simplified general expressions, which can be used to evaluate the performance of a family of constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detectors, are obtained. A performance analysis is performed, which compares the results of the derived expressions and those for cell averaging CFAR, order statistics CFAR, automatic censored mean level CFAR, and Anderson-Darling CFAR detection schemes under different signal-to-noise ratio and interfering targets scenarios. It is found that the derived expressions closely reflect the behavior of both detectors and model other potential detectors that are particularly more robust in the presence of severe interfering targets.