Clutter map CFAR detector based on maximal resolution cell

In order to improve the detection performance of clutter map constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detectors in multiple persisting targets situation, a clutter map CFAR (CM-CFAR) detector based on the maximal resolution cell (CM/MRC-CFAR) is proposed in this paper. In the CM/MRC-CFAR detector, at each scan, a comparison threshold is computed by multiplying the amplitude of the maximal resolution cell (MRC) in the map cell by a scaling factor. Then, the number of the left resolution cells, whose amplitudes are smaller than the comparison threshold, is counted and compared with a threshold integer. Based on the comparison result, proper resolution cells are selected to update the detection threshold. The detection probability of CM/MRC-CFAR in both homogeneous and multiple persisting targets situations is derived in a closed-form expression. The detection performance of CM/MRC-CFAR is evaluated in various environments and compared with other CM-CFAR detectors. CM/MRC-CFAR exhibits a very low CFAR loss in a homogeneous environment and achieves a robust detection performance in multiple persisting targets situations. Since no ranking is required except searching for the MRC, the computation load of CM/MRC-CFAR is low, and it is easy to implement the detector in radar systems in practice.