Clairvoyant and adaptive signal detection in non-Gaussian clutter: a data-dependent threshold interpretation

This paper addresses the problem of signal detection in correlated non-Gaussian clutter modeled as a spherically invariant random process. The optimum strategy to detect a constant signal, with either known or unknown complex amplitude, embedded in correlated Gaussian clutter is given by comparing the whitening-matched filter output with a fixed threshold. When the clutter is non-Gaussian, the performance of the matched filter sensibly degrades. The optimum strategy is the classical whitening-matched filter output compared with a data-dependent threshold. This interpretation provides a deeper insight into the structure of the optimum detector and allows us to single out a family of suboptimum detectors based on a polynomial approximation of the data-dependent threshold. They are easy to implement and have performance that is really close to the optimal. The adaptive implementation of the polynomial detectors is also investigated, and their performance is analyzed by means of Monte Carlo simulation for various clutter scenarios.