Performance Comparison Of The ANMF Detectors In Sea Clutter Background

Radars have been widely used in both modern science and military fields. Target detection in sea clutter is an important problem in radar’s applications and receives more and more attention from the radar community. Since the radars were invented, target detection technology has been fast developing. Many constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection methods in sea clutter background have been developed and the adaptive normalized matched filter (ANMF) detector is one of efficient methods in detecting moving targets in sea clutter. The dissertation focuses on the performance comparison of the ANMF detector and the traditional cell-average CFAR (CA-CFAR) detector in the Doppler domain by using real high resolution sea clutter datasets.At first, the features of the sea clutter are analyzed, and several current target detection methods are introduced. And then, based on the data collected by the McMaster IPIX radar, the statistical characteristics of high resolution sea clutter are investigated, including amplitude distributions and correlation along radar’s fast time (radial range) and radar’s slow time (pulses).Secondly, several important ANMF detection algorithms are introduced. Several modified versions of the ANMF detectors are discussed. The experiments using real sea clutter data and simulated target returns are made to examine the detection performance of these detectors.Thirdly, a complete comparison between the ANMF detector and CA-CFAR detector in the Doppler domain is made. The results show that the ANMF detector outperforms the traditional CA-CFAR detector. Moreover, the computational complexity of the two detectors is discussed. These conclusions are helpful for selecting the detection method and detection algorithm in practical radar systems.