Adaptive Thresholding in Marine RADARs

In order to detect targets upon sea surface or near it, marine radars should be capable of distinguishing signals of target reflections from the sea clutter. Our proposed method in this paper relates to detection of dissimilar marine targets in an inhomogeneous environment with clutter and non-stationary noises, and is based on adaptive thresholding determination methods. The variance and the mean values of the noise level have been estimated in this paper, based on non-stationary, statistical methods and thresholding has been carried out using the suggested two-pole recursive filter. Making the rate of false alarm constant, the concerned threshold resolves the hypothesis of existence or absence of the target signal. Performance of the mentioned algorithm has been compared with the well-known conventional method as CA-CFAR in terms of decreasing the losses and increasing calculation speed. The algorithm provided for detection of signal has been implemented as a part of signal-processing algorithms of some practical marine radar. The results obtained from the algorithm performance in a real environment indicate appropriate workability of this method in heterogeneous environment and non-stationary interference.