Ground (Weibull-Distributed) Clutter Suppression Based on Independent Component Analysis for Detection of Swerling Target Models

Abstract The present study considers detection of the weak Swerling targets which exist in the clutter Doppler cell of the Weibull-distributed ground-based clutter by means of Independent Component Analysis (ICA). We present a new detector based on convolutive ICA that is independent of target and clutter statistical distribution and has no need to the previous knowledge of the radar signals. For the detection of radar target using ICA, there are some problems that are solved by two wisely proposed approach through the detector. Synthetic generated clutter and target are used to show quantitatively and qualitatively the capability of the proposed ICA-based detector. Also, the method is tested against real-life data. Finally, the computational time is considered and the superiority of the detector is shown by a comparison between the proposed and a typical Neyman-Pearson (NP) detector.