Systems Engineering and Electronics ›› 2026, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (1): 44-55.doi: 10.12305/j.issn.1001-506X.2026.01.05

• Electronic Technology • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Method for detecting small targets using prior information under high sea states

Hao DING1(), Jifeng WEI2, Yunlong DONG1,*, Zheng CAO1, Hengli YU1   

  1. 1. Naval Aviation University,Yantai 264001,China
    2. Harbin Engineering University Yantai Research Institute,Yantai 264006,China
  • Received:2024-09-26 Online:2026-01-25 Published:2026-02-11
  • Contact: Yunlong DONG E-mail:331299929@qq.com

Abstract:

Under high sea state and low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR), the presence of seaspikes often causes averaging constant false alarm rate (CFAR) test statistics to display long-tail distributions. This leads to significant overlap between targets and clutter, thereby reducing detection performance. To mitigate the impact of such anomalies as sea spikes, this paper takes into account the temporal correlation of large-scale wide-area sea surface echo data and extends the data utilization from single-frame to multi-frame analysis. By adopting a Bayesian estimation, we extract priori information from multiple frames and develop a Bayesian test statistic using a sequential estimation method. The proposed method integrates Bayesian test statistics into the smallest of constant false alarm rate (SO-CFAR) detection framework. The proposed detection method uses power transformation to enhance the Gaussian characteristics of the original test statistic, and accomplishes the fusion of historical and current frames while ensuring iterative stability. The comparative analysis of measured data at sea states 2-5 shows that the proposed method has significantly improved target detection probability compared to original method and multi-frame methods under high sea states, confirming the advantages of the proposed method in improving detection performance.

Key words: radar, target detection, priori information, Bayesian estimation

CLC Number: 

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