Application of time-frequency distributions for improved radar target detection

The detection of small pieces of ice, floating in the ocean, is discussed. It is shown that out of all the time-frequency distributions belonging to Cohen´s class, the Wigner-Ville distribution is the optimum. Based on features extracted from the ambiguity function of the signal, a detection algorithm is described. The results obtained using this algorithm are shown to be an order of magnitude better than those obtained using standard Doppler processing