MIMO radar techniques: two‐stage constant false alarm rate detection for fast‐fluctuating targets

Here, the authors analyse a two‐step constant false alarm rate (CFAR) detection problem in distributed sensor system (e.g. statistical multiple‐input multiple‐output ( MIMO) radar) for fast‐fluctuating targets (TS‐AMF‐II). The scheme arises when a data rate restriction forces each of the distributed systems to censor their detection statistics before sharing and is motivated by the fact that the clutter plus noise power and the signal to clutter plus noise ratio may be both unknown in practice. The proposed detector has two thresholds: the first one called local threshold controls the communication rate and the second one called global threshold adjusts the global probability of false alarm. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed detector has good detection performance at a low communication rate.