Radar detection based on Bayesian estimation of target amplitude

A new approach to detect a target with an unknown amplitude in clutter is proposed. The received signal models under two hypotheses, H ₀ and H ₁, are assumed to be the same, except that the target amplitude is zero under H ₀. Using the Bayesian approach, it is shown that the likelihood ratio can be calculated as the ratio of the prior to posterior probabilities of the target amplitude. Based on this relation, a new method for target detection in Gaussian clutter is presented. This method is applied to cases with both known and unknown clutter statistics and in each case, white and coloured clutters are considered. Simulation results show that the proposed detector has a much better performance compared with conventional generalised likelihood ratio test detectors.