Peaks Detector Algorithm after CFAR for Multiple Targets Detection

Abstract

The constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm is a strong technique to detect and track dynamic targets in an environment of an unknown noise floor. Multiple reflections of a pulse from a target and different signal processing techniques applied to the received pulse, make it spread along the range and/or Doppler axis. Spreading of a pulse results in a cluster of targets detection for a single target when the CFAR technique is applied to it. This causes difficulties in calculating those target’s parameters which require only a single maximum peak for a target, such as Radar cross-section (RCS), relative phase, etc. This manuscript proposes a solution, which extracts a single independent peak for a target that had clusters of peaks after CFAR. The novelty of the algorithm is that it works well to extract a single peak for each of all targets in the multiple targets environment, as compared to the conventional global maxima finding techniques which outputs only one target of the maximum amplitude while suppressing the rest of the small targets. The algorithm is basically a local maxima finder algorithm termed as peaks detector algorithm. An attractive feature of this algorithm is that it neither disturbs the Probability of false alarm rate (Pfa) of CFAR nor it affects the probability of detection (Pd) of a target. The algorithm is tested and its performance is evaluated in a multiple targets environment on the output of 1D and 2D CFAR.