An examination of radar signal processing via non-parametric techniques

An extensive analysis of radar signal-processing techniques has been accomplished through modeling the radar detection functions on a digital computer. The radar signals used as the input to the computer models were high-resolution digital recordings of actual weather clutter observed on an Airport Surveillance Radar. Four target-detection algorithms were studied, two of which were binary techniques and two of which were multilevel techniques. For both the binary and multilevel techniques, two classes of algorithms were studied: parametric and nonparametric. The parametric algorithms were of the mean-level type in which the presence of a target signal is based on a comparison of the signal amplitude with the mean level of adjacent areas. Nonparametric algorithms were of the rank-order type in which the presence of a target signal is based on the rank of the potential target-signal amplitude in relation to video amplitudes in adjacent areas. For both techniques, the rank-order types were found to provide slightly better detection in weather clutter than the mean-level types. The multilevel rank-order type was found to provide slightly better performances than the binary rank-order type, but not sufficient to be statistically significant.