Coherent Detection of Swerling 0 Targets in Sea-Ice Weibull-Distributed Clutter Using Neural Networks

• Published in: IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement 2010-12, Vol.59 (12), p.3139-3151
• Main Authors: Vicen-Bueno, R, Rosa-Zurera, M, Jarabo-Amores, M P, de la Mata-Moya, David
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Approximation; Artificial intelligence; Clutter; clutter reduction; Coherence; Computational efficiency; detection; Detectors; Instrumentation; Learning; Neural networks; neural networks (NNs); radar; Radar antennas; Radar cross section; Remote sensing; Robustness
• ISSN: 0018-9456; 1557-9662
• DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2010.2047579

The detection of Swerling 0 targets in movement in sea-ice Weibull-distributed clutter by neural networks (NNs) is presented in this paper. Synthetic data generated for typical sea-ice Weibull parameters reported in the literature are used. Due to the capability of NNs for learning the statistical properties of the clutter and target signals during a supervised training, high clutter reduction rates are achieved, reverting on high detection performances. The proposed NN-based detector is compared with a reference detector proposed in the literature that approximates the Neyman-Pearson (NP) detector. The results presented in the paper allow empirically demonstrating how the NN-based detector outperforms the detector taken as reference in all the cases under study. It is achieved not only in performance but also in robustness with respect to changes in sea-ice Weibull-distributed clutter conditions. Moreover, the computational cost of the NN-based detector is very low, involving high signal processing speed.