A Robust Range Spread Target Detector for Wideband Radar Using Envelope Model Prior

Wideband radar is widely used in target detection because of its high range resolution. And the scattering echo signal can be considered as a range spread target, so the traditional detectors are no longer suitable and detectors for the wideband radar need to be developed. The feature square matching detector can have better detection performance than the commonly used energy detector based on the envelope model prior of the range profile, which can alleviate the collapsing loss of the energy detector when the scattering center distribution is sparse to a certain extent. However, the detection performance may decline sharply if the prior information of the envelope model is inaccurate. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a robust range spread target detector. It uses the feature square matching detection method firstly. If the target is not detected, the energy detection method will be used in the next step. It is considered that there is no target only under the circumstances that the target is not detected by using both detection methods. The experimental results show that the proposed detector has the best performance among all detectors, regardless of whether the envelope model prior is accurate or not, which verifies the effectiveness and practicability of the detector.