Optimality of the cell averaging CFAR detector

Abstract

The cell averaging constant false alarm rate detector has been assumed to be optimal for detecting Swerling I targets embedded in exponential clutter and noise of unknown power. This is because the detector uses a minimum variance unbiased estimate (which is also a maximum likelihood estimate) of the unknown clutter-plus-noise power to set the threshold. The authors prove, using a result concerning least favorable distributions in composite hypotheses testing, that the cell averaging detector is indeed optimal in that it is a uniformly most powerful detector.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>