High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar Performance Analysis for CA-CFAR Algorithm in K-distributed Clutter

Abstract

This paper analyzes the performance of a cellaveraging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) algorithm designed for K-distributed clutter in High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar applications (HFSWR). Due to complex scattering mechanisms, the clutter returns in the range-Doppler spectrum are highly non-homogeneous. This study compares a closed-form probability of detection of the K-distribution CA-CFAR to a numerical simulation of sea clutter based on a physical sea radar cross-section (RCS) model, which considers wind conditions and operating parameters. The simulation shows that the closedform analytical expression acts as an upper bound for detector performance, which is degraded in practice by the strong peaks of the clutter power.