Clutter-map CFAR detection for range-spread targets in non-Gaussian clutter. I. System design

The problem of constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) detection of possibly range-spread targets in clutter-dominated environment, whether Weibull or lognormal is presented. The proposed scheme is a member of the clutter-map CFAR family, which relies on a combination of space and time processing as well as on the relevant properties of the location-scale distributions; it ensures CFAR against noise with biparametric variations without incurring masking effects from slow, extended targets or multiple interferers. We also give guidelines for designing the system parameters, along with approximate formulas for setting the appropriate threshold multipliers to achieve a given false-alarm rate (FAR) under Weibull and lognormal clutter.