Ultra-wideband radar data models and target detection with adaptive rank-order filters

A number of aspects of ultra-wideband radar target detection analysis and algorithm development are addressed. The first portion of the paper describes a bi-modal technique for modeling ultra-wideband radar clutter. This technique was developed based on an analysis of ultra-wideband radar phenomenology. Synthetic image samples that were generated by this modeling process are presented. This sample set is characterized by a number of physical parameters. The second portion of this paper describes an approach to developing a class of filters, known as rank-order filters, for ultra-wideband radar target detection applications. The development of a new rank-order filter denoted as a "discontinuity filter" is presented. Comparative target detection results are presented as a function of data model parameters. The comparative results include "discontinuity filter" performance versus the performance of median filtering and CFAR filtering.