Optimisation of a generalised square-law detector

An interference improvement factor (IIF) is derived for a generalised square-law detector utilised for a radar application. This factor, which is a ratio of two quadratic forms, incorporates the effects of antenna beam shape as the radar beam scans over the target, interference due to receiver noise plus clutter and the target Doppler frequency. The IIF can be maximised to improve target detectability via eigenvalue, eigenvector techniques so that the optimal weights to be applied by a weighted integrator following the square-law device can be determined for an N-pulse batch. Numerical results are presented for a sea surveillance application.