Application of higher-order statistics for improved radar target detection in sea clutter

The application of higher-order statistics (HOS) to the detection of radar targets takes advantage of HOS characteristics that allow the formulation of a test statistic that is unbiased by Gaussian noise and insensitive to constant target velocity. To make use or these characteristics using data from a coherent radar, the samples from the radar´s synchronous detector are formulated into special fourth-order products and coherently averaged. A second version of the HOS detector compensates for constant target acceleration. Comparisons are made between the two HOS detectors, the pulsed Doppler detector and the quadratic detector. The comparison shows a one to two dB improvement using the HOS detectors with Gaussian noise. However, examples are presented of an accelerating, synthetic target in actual, spiky sea clutter that show a 2.5 to 11 dB of improvement