Detection of Targets in Non-Gaussian Sea Clutter

Measurements of sea clutter using high-resolution radar show that clutter cross section is not Rayleigh distributed. Both the log-normal and contaminated-normal distributions are proposed and yield a fairly good description of some experimental data. Threshold values and detection curves are given for the mean and median detectors for both distributions. It is shown that the median is robust¿ that is, the threshold values and detection probabilities do not depend on the detailed shape of the clutter distribution but only on its median value.