Fractional Fourier Transform based chirp detector versus some conventional detectors

Detection of chirp pulses with varying parameters is required in many applications like the Intercept Sonar, where transmissions from other platforms, can be chirps, among other types of waveforms. This paper presents a detailed evaluation of a detector based on Fractional Fourier Transform (henceforth shortened as FrFT) for detecting chirps. The motivation behind the proposed evaluation is the inherent ability of FrFT, to process chirp signals better than the conventional Fourier Transform. Performance of FrFT detector is compared with conventional FFT and Energy detectors, in the presence of white Gaussian noise as well as 1/f noise. Our simulations clearly show that the FrFT based detector outperforms the other two detectors and improvements above 10 dB are possible.