CFAR detection of weak target in clutter using chaos synchronization

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, a novel constant false alarm rate (CFAR) approach for detecting weak targets in sea clutter spectrum based on chaos synchronization is proposed. The weak target signal is detected when the synchronization between two identical chaotic systems is realized, even if the target spectrum lies inside the clutter spectrum. The threshold for the proposed CFAR detection is derived theoretically. The proposed chaos‐synchronization‐based CFAR technique is shown to be able to enhance the detectability of the target when the signal‐to‐clutter ratio and signal‐to‐noise ratio are low. Numerical experiments based on real radar sea clutter data confirm the effectiveness of the proposed chaos‐synchronization‐based CFAR detection method. The performance is superior to those of the standard autoregressive estimation‐based and the cell‐averaging CFAR detectors. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.