Enhanced detection of weak radar pulses using kurtosis statistics

The examination of kurtosis statistics of a received signal is a well-known technique for detecting unwanted radio frequency interference (RFI) in passive remote sensing applications, which measure thermal noise [5]. The RFI removal is often carried out in post processing stage. In contrast to the mitigation of the RFI in remote sensing data, the kurtosis analysis can also be utilized to detect weak and noisy signals in the fields of electronic warfare and signal intelligence. The kurtosis algorithm can be incorporated into real time systems, thus increasing their probability of detection by several decibels. In this paper we will present the optimal performance of the kurtosis algorithm in terms of interception of pulsed radar waveforms.