High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar Performance Analysis for CA-CFAR Algorithm in K-distributed Clutter

This paper analyzes the performance of a cell-averaging constant false alarm rate (CA-CFAR) algorithm designed for K-distributed clutter in High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar applications (HFSWR). Due to complex scattering mechanisms, the clutter returns in the range-Doppler spectrum are highly non-homogeneous. This study compares a closed-form probability of detection of the K-distribution CA-CFAR to a numerical simulation of sea clutter based on a physical sea radar cross-section (RCS) model, which considers wind conditions and operating parameters. The simulation shows that the closed-form analytical expression acts as an upper bound for detector performance, which is degraded in practice by the strong peaks of the clutter power.