Switched order statistics CFAR test for target detection

In this paper we introduce a new switched order statistics CFAR test (SW-OS) for detecting a radar target in the presence of nonhomogeneous clutter and/or multiple interfering targets situation. Whereas a switching CFAR test (S-CFAR) was recently proposed in the literature for addressing a similar background scenario, unlike the S-CFAR test, the test proposed here does not utilize the test cell statistic in classifying the cells surrounding the test cell as homogeneous or not. The SW-OS test has some similarity to the selection and estimation (SE) test, which was co-authored by the second author of this paper, but is simpler to design. Probability of detection performance results obtained for Rayleigh clutter and Rayleigh target indicate that the SW-OS performs nearly as good as an order statistic test (OS) in the homogeneous background condition and performs much better than OS under the presence of many interfering targets. When compared to S-CFAR, SW-OS performs slightly worse in the homogeneous background, but performs better under the condition of many interfering targets.