ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the radar signal processing researcher with a comprehensive account of recent developments in sliding window noncoherent constant false alarm rate (CFAR) radar detection in a Pareto-type clutter environment. The development and analysis of such detection processes has been facilitated by the elegant nature of the Pareto distributional model. Sliding window detectors (SWDs) have been in use since the 1960s and provide a somewhat simpler alternative to the Neyman-Pearson based decision rules. These arose out of analysis of plan position indicator (PPI) displays used to show the radar view of the scanned region, as well as plots of intensity measurements of radar returns as a function of range, Doppler or both. The mathematical developments in this book demonstrates how non-coherent sliding window CFAR detectors can be produced under the assumption of Pareto distributed clutter.
