Dim target detection and discrimination from sea clutter

The track before detect (TBD) algorithm based on Dynamic Programming (DP) is an effective method for dim target detection from sea clutter. But during the process of multi-frame integration, a few false targets may caused by the expansion of targets and strong noise. In order to reduce the false alarms, this paper analyzes the target discrimination methods of SDH and SDH+LEV. The applications of TBD detection and discrimination to both single-target and multi-target scenes are discussed and the results show that the DP-based TBD is effective to dim target detection and tracking, but the post-processing of target discrimination is necessary. Moreover, the concatenated LEV+SDH discrimination scheme can reduce false alarms successfully to both multi-target scene and single-target scene, and it is a valid post-processing method of TBD.