Analysis of the cell averaging CFAR in Weibull background using a distribution approximation

In this work, we study the performance of the cell averaging (CA) CFAR processor in the presence of uniform Weibull clutter. The major issue in this analysis is the unavailability of the distribution of the sum of independent and identically distributed (I.I.D.) Weibull random variables. We use an approximation to the distribution of the sum of i.i.d. Weibull random variables for the theoretical analysis of the CA-CFAR processor. The detection performance analysis has been done using both numerical solutions of the derived equations and Monte-Carlo simulations. The CFAR loss has also been worked out. The results show that the CA-CFAR processor has acceptable performance for a wide range of the shape parameter, accompanied by its added advantage of simplicity of implementation for real-time applications. The performance of the CA-CFAR detector can be used as a yardstick for the analysis of other CFAR processors in the presence of Weibull clutter.