Detection of targets in bandlimited and spatially correlated clutter

This paper describes the preliminary analysis of an unconventional approach for detecting targets in band limited clutter that exhibits some degree of spatial correlation from range bin to range bin. The receiver processing chain utilizes a lattice predictor (LP) filter to remove clutter at the output of a Doppler filter bank. Subsequently, an order-statistic (OS) constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processing stage is used to threshold the data and a binary integrator creates a binary image of threshold crossings accumulated over several coherent processing intervals (CPIs). A novel technique is applied for removing noise from the binary image using morphological filters, thereby exposing tracks created by any moving targets. Once a track has been detected, the corresponding target is declared present. Test results based on measured clutter data will be presented that suggest the proposed processing techniques may improve detection performance in a clutter environment.