ADAPTIVE ORDER STATISTIC AND TRIMMED

MEAN CFAR RADAR DETECTORS

Prashant P . Gandhi and Saleem A. Kassam

Department of Electrical Engineering

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104

ABSTRACT
Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) detectors have been
used for detecting radar targets in noise and clutter. Their
primary goal is to maintain the design false alarm rate in the
presence of nonstationary clutter power. This is achieved by
adaptively estimating, in effect, the clutter power based on a finite
number of clutter samples within a processing window. The
order statistic (OS) CFAR detector, for example, uses one
ordered sample, say the kth smallest, in each processing window
to estimate the clutter power. The OS detector, however, exhibits
considerable increase in the false alarm rate in regions of clutter
power transitions. In this paper we consider two recently
proposed CFAR detectors, namely, the variably trimmed mean
(VTM) detector and the adaptive order statistic (AOS) detector to
overcome this problem. We com we performance characteristics
of these two detectors and the
detector in exponential and
Rayleigh distributed clutter. We show that properly designed
AOS and VTM detectors can outperform the OS detector, and that
the AOS detector performance is generally superior to that of the
VTM detector.

8s

I. INTRODUCTION
In detection of radar targets embedded in nonstationary
clutter whose power is not known a priori, the class of consmt
false alarm rate (CFAR) detection schemes has been proven to be
useful in maintaining the false alarm rate close to the design
value. This is because in a CFAR detector the false alarm rate is
almost independent of the background clutter power. To achieve
this, a CFAR detector processes a finite set of range samples
within a reference window surrounding the cell under
investigation and sets the threshold adaptively based 0 5 :!local
estimate of tqtal noise power. For example, the video range
samples, XI,
X 2 , . . ., XN within a finite processing window of
size N = 2n, are processed by a CFAR detector to form an
estimate Z of the local noise nower. An adaptive threshold TZ is
then formed to which the test cell Y is compared, and the
presence of a target in the test cell is declared if Y > 72.Figure 1
depicts the block diagram of such a detection scheme. Here Tis
a constant parameter and depends on the window size N , the
design false alarm rate and the CFAR detection scheme used. In
the absence of a target, if the radar returns are assumed to be
independent and Gaussian, and if a square-law detector is
employed to obtain the range samples, then it can be easily
shown t h a t each Xi is governed by the exponential distribution.
If instead a linear detector is incorporated, then each range sample

The cell averaging (CA) CFAR detector, for example,

maximizes the detection probability under the assumption of the
exponential model for the target and (stationary) clutter returns.
Here the statistic 2 is simply the sum of the N reference range
s;impIes Xi. It is well-known, however, that the CA detector
______~~
~

This research is supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific

Research under Grant AFOSR. 87-0052.

exhibits significant increase in the false alarm rate in regions of

clutter power transitions and masking of the primary target in a
multiple target environment [I]. A different type of detector, the
order statistic (OS) detector in which the kth smallest range
sample is used to form the threshold, has also been proposed in
[2] to overcome the problems associated with the CA detector.
However, a performance analysis of the OS detector presented in
[3] shows that although the OS detector can resolve the primary
target i n a multi-target environment, its false alarm rate
performance in regions of clutter transitions is similar to that of
the CA detector. Extensions of the OS detector, namely the
trimmed mean (TM) detector and the censored mean level detector
(CMLD) have also been proposed [3],[4].

In this paper we consider the performance characteristics

of two recently proposed detectors, namely, the variably trimmed
mean (VTM) detector [ 5 ] and the adaptive order statistic (AOS)
detector [6] in stationary clutter as well as in regions of clutter
power transitions and multiple target environments. The AOS
CFAR detector is a combination of two OS CFAR detectors in
which the value of k is based on the outcome of a hypothesis test
that is used to determine the presence or absence of clutter power
transitions. The VTh4 CFAR detector, on the other hand, is an
extension of the TM detector in which the set of order statistics
that determine the threshold is vaned according to a datadependent rule.
We demonstrate, through computer simulations, that
these newly proposed CFAR detectors can be designed to exhibit
minor loss of detection power in homogeneous clutter compared
to the CA CFAR detector, can maintain false alarm rate close to
the design value, and can discriminate closely-spaced targets. In
addition, we show that a properly designed AOS detector can
give superior performance characteristics than a VTM detector at
the expense of increased detector complexity.

11. DESCRIPTION OF THE DETECTOR

STRUCTURES
Let X(1), ....X ( N ) denote the samples Xi,..., X N that are
ordered according to increasing magnitude so that X 1) < X(2) I
....I
X p . In The OS CFAR detector, the threshold isformed
using t e statistic

where k = k,, is an integer-valued design parameter and takes on

values between 1 and N . In the optimum OS detector, the value
of k,, is chosen to maximize the detection performance in
stationary clutter. For N = 24 the optimum value for k,, is 21
[2],[3]. The TM detector, on the other hand, determines Z by
censoring T I ordered range samples from below and T2 ordered
range samples from above and by forming a sum of the
remaining ordered samples. The statistic Z in this case is given
by

42.1.1
832

CH2766 - 4/89/0000- 0832 0 1989 IEEE

if

a clutter edge is present

otherwise.

(6)

where Ti and T 2 are the upper and the lower trimming

parameters, respectively, satisfying conditions 0 IT i , T 2 c N
and T I +2'2 c N . The TM detector reduces to the OS detector if
Ti = kos - 1 and T 2 = N - kos and to the CA detector if
T1 = T 2 = 0. The sum of more than one ordered range samples
that is incorporated in the TM detector leads to some
improvement in the detection performance in exponentially
distributed stationary clutter over that of the OS detector [3],[4].
It is shown in [3] that a relatively high value for T i is required to
reduce degradation in the false alarm rate of the TM detector at
clutter edges with only minor loss of detection performance in
stationary clutter.

Here 1 Iko, k l 5 N are integer-valued design parameters. The

AOS detector can be thought of as a mixture of two OS detectors
with only one of the two detectors selected in a given window
according to the above rule. In general, ko is chosen to give
maximum detection power in stationary clutter and k l m give
false alarm rate performance invariance in nonstationary clutter.
This will generally imply that ko I k l . For instance, i n a
reference window of size 24, may be set to a value around 21
and kl to 23 or 24. A block diagram of the AOS detector IS
shown in Figure 3.

I Jriably Trimmed Mean Detector: In the VTM detector the

statistic Z is defined as [5]

versus its absence (Hb) is c a n i d out to determine the presence or

the absence of a clutter power transition in each processing
window. Let us denote by U ( 1 ) , ..., U(n) the samples X I , ...,
Xn in the lagging half of the reference window, ordered
according to their magnitudes, and by V(1), ..., V,,, the samples
Xn+l....,X N in the leading half window ordered according to
their magnitudes. Define the statistics 61 and & as

K2
X(j)/(K2-k

Z =

+ 1)

(3)

i=k

where integer-valued k is the index of the smallest ordered

sample in the sum and is a design value between 1 and N , and K 2
satisfying k I K 2 I N is a discrete random variable whose value
is determined based on a data-dependent rule. The VTM detector
can therefore be thought of as a TM detector with a fixed lower
trimming T I = k - 1 and a variable upper trimming T 2 = N - K 2 .
The data-dependent rule that sets the value of K 2 in each
processing window is defined as follows:

(4)
where yis a real-valued design parameter. A block diagram of
the VTM detector in shown in Figure 2.
This procedure can be thought of as performing a separate
experiment on X ( + i=l, ..., N to compute the value K 2 = k2 in
every window. In each processing window, an interval of size
yX(k) is formed above and including X ( k ) , and those range
samples whose values fall within the interval [X(k), (1 +'y)X(k))
are used to determine the statistic Z. Clearly, the VTM detector
reduces to the OS detector with k,, = k as y+ 0 and to the TM
detector with Ti = k - 1 and T2 = 0 as y-+ =.
With :I judicious choice for the VTM detector can
resolve the piimary target from up to N - k interfering targets.
This I $ lxcause the reference range samples that contain the
interfering targets will be generally larger that (l+)i)X(k) and
hence, will not be included in the sum. On the other hand, in a
clutter power transition region with the test cell Y containing a
sample from high-clutter power region and with k > n [=N/2],
most of the samples larger than X ( k ) will now be included in
forming Z. This leads to a higher value for the threshold which
in turn helps to control the false alaxm rate at clutter edges.
Adoptive Order Statistic Detector: The statistic Z in this case. is
given by

z= x ( K )

(5)

where K is a discrete random variable whose value in each

reference window is determined by the following rule:

A separate hypothesis test for clutter edge presence (Hi)

(7)
where m is an integer-valued design trimming parameter and
takes on values between 0 and n-1. Note that 61 and & are
simply the trimmed sum in each half window. The null
hypothesis
is accepted if 1/pI6(X) I/3 where 6(X) = 61/&
and p is a real-valued parameter. The value of p is found by
satisfying the relationship
CXQ

= P[H; accepted I I
stationary
& clutter]

(8)

where the design parameter 0 I a0 I 1 is the significance level

versus Hi.
(or type I error) of the test
We now give the rationale behind selecting such a scheme to
test the presence of a clutter power transition in a window.
Consider a situation where there is a low-clutter power to a highclutter power transition in the leading half of the reference
window with more than rn high-clutter samples. In this case 6,
will generally be larger than 61, and therefore the test statistic 6
will be larger than unity. If 6 exceeds p (upper threshold), then
the clutter-edge-present hypothesis Hi is accepted. Similarly,
during a high-clutter power to a low-clutter power transition, 6
will be small; in particular, if 6 < l/P (lower threshold), then
again Hi is accepted. In stationary clutter, however, 61 will be
generally close to & (i.e. 6= l), provided there are no interferers
present in the window. In fact, if p is chosen to satisfy (8), then
6will take on values between l/p and P with probability 1 - ao.
Finally, the trimmed-mean form of 61 and is incorporated to
make the test insensitive to at most m interferers in either half of
the reference window. Clearly, m should be larger than or equal
to N - ko.

42.1.2
833

Multiple target environment: Let us now consider the case where

111. SIMULATION RESULTS

We now present performance characteristicsof the VTM and
AOS detector in both Rayleigh and exponentially distributed
clutter. Note that the clutter samples governed by the Rayleigh
distribution can be easily generated by taking the positive squareroot of exponentially distributed samples. The OS detector
performance is identical in both cases since magnitude-orderingis
invariant under the square-root operation. In the exponentially
distributed clutter, we assume that the samples in the N reference
cells and in the test cell are governed by the probability density
function (pdf)
f(x) = 1421) exp(-x/2A),

x20

(9)

where A > 0 is a parameter. To determine the detection

probabilities, A is assumed to take on the value p in the absence,
and the value p( 1+S) in the presence, of a Swerling I target
where S denotes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Here p is the
total noise power. In a stationary clutter environment the
reference cells are taken to be identically distributed with a
common parameter A = p . In a region of clutter power transition,
however, samples from the low-clutter power region are
governed by (9) with A = p while A = p ( 1+C) describes the
samples from the high-clutter power region with clutter-to-noise
ratio (CNR) C.
The detectors considered in this study are designed for a
nominal f f . = 10-3 and N = 24. In the AOS detector, we ,set
a0 = 0.01, ko = 20 and k l = 24. The values of T are obtained
through analysis in the exponentially distributed clutter and
through simulation in Rayleigh distributed clutter. It can be
shown that the VTM and the AOS detectors are not significantly
different in detection performance from the optimum OS detector
with k,, = 21, in stationary clutter. In fact, due to datadependent averaging in the VTM detector, its detection
performance is generally somewhat better than that of the
optimum OS detector in stationary clutter [5] whereas it is slightly
worse for the AOS detector with the above parameters. We also
do not present the detection performance of our detectors in
Rayleigh and exponential clutter since the performance in both
cases is quite similar.

there are four interfering targets present in one half of the

reference window. Both the primary and the interfering targets
are assumed to be of strength S = 20 db. The detection
probability of the OS detector in this situation is 0.47 f o r b s = 21
and is 0.84 for kos = 20. Tables 3 and 4 show the detection
performance of the VTM and AOS detectors, respectively, for
Rayleigh clutter. The performance in the exponential case is
almost identical and is therefore omitted. Clearly, for the
parameters shown in Table 3, the VTM detector is insensitive to
the presence of four interfering targets. This is expected since k
is chosen to be less that 21. A similar conclusion is also reached
for the AOS detector except for rn = 3. This is because, for
m 5 3, the test statistic & X ) in the AOS detector is influenced
by one of the four interfering targets, leading to an overall
decrease in the detection probability.

Summary of the results: It is seen from the above results that

employing a VTM or an AOS detector with judiciously chosen
parameters can yield an overall improvement in performance over
the optimum OS detector (kos = 21). For instance, the VTM
detector with k = 20 and y = 2.0 or the AOS detector with
= 0.01 and m = 4 or 5 can be used instead of the optimum
OS detector resulting in approximately the same or lower false
alarm rate at clutter edges and detection performance insensitive
to up to four interfering targets. Of course, the OS detector with
kos = 20 can be used to achieve tolerance to four interfering
targets at the expense of increased false alarm rate at clutter
edges. Furthermore, incorporating a linear detector which gives
Rayleigh distributed clutter samples instead of the square-law
detector can lead to some additional decrease in the false alarm
rate at clutter edges without sacrificing the detection capability of
the VTM detector.
We may also conclude from these results that a properly
designed AOS detector generally outperforms the best VTM
detector by attaining considerably lower false alarm rate at clutter
edges while giving approximately the same detection
performance.

REFERENCES
M. Weiss, "Analysis of some modified cell-averaging CFAR
processors in multiple-target situations," IEEE Trans. on
Aerospance and Electronic Systems, AES-18, pp. 102-113,
Jan. 1982.

Regions of clutter power transition: Let us consider the worst

case scenario in which the lagging half of the reference window

contains samples from a low-clutter region, and the leading half
and the test cell contain samples from a high-clutter region with
C = 10 db. The false alarm probability of the OS detector in this
case is 13x 10-3 for koS = 21 and is 20x 10-3 for kos = 20.
Tables 1 and 2 show the false alarm rate performance of the VTM
and AOS detectors, respectively, i n both Rayleigh and
exponentially distributed clutter. It is clear from Table 1 that
increasing either k or yof the VTM detector leads to a decrease in
the probability of false alarm. This is because with increasing k
and/or 15 larger samples are included in forming the sum 2 of (3)
leading to a high value for the VTM detector threshold.
Similarly, the f f a of the AOS detector in Table 2 increases as m
increases since, for a larger value of rn, the statistic &X) uses
fewer samples to determine the presence or absence of a clutter
edge. Further, note that the false alarm rate of of the VTM
detector is considerably lower in the Rayleigh distributed clutter
compared to that in the exponential clutter, whereas it is slightly
higher in the AOS detector.

H. Rohling, "Radar CFAR thresholding in clutter and

multiple target situations,"IEEE Trans. on Aerospance and
Electronic Systems, AES-19, pp. 608-621, July 1983.
P. P. Gandhi and S. A. Kassam, "Analysis of some CFAR
processors in nonhomogeneous background," IEEE Trans.
on Aerospance and Electronic Systems, AES-24, pp. 427445, July 1988.
J. Ritcey, "Performance analysis of tire censored mean-level
detector," IEEE Trans. on Aerospance and Electronic
Systems, AES-22, pp. 443-454, July 1986.

I. Ozgunes, P. P. Gandhi and S. A. Kassam. "A CFAR

detection scheme based on modified trimmed mean
thresholding," In f r o c . of the Conference on Information
Sciences and Systems, Baltimore, Maryland, March 1989.
P. P.Gandhi and S. A. Kassam, "An adaptive order statistic
constant false alarm rate detector," In Proc. of the IEEE
International Conference on Systems Engineering, Dayton,
Ohio, August 1989.

42.1.3
a34

Range Samples
XN

*l

D'

18
19

20

No target

..*,t,
Ik7

1.

,. i i
I

Y k

.. t

I
I

I
I

26.7
19.6
13.6

14.2

11.3

9.5

Exponential Clutter
1
1
2

I
I

I
I

38.0
27.4

20.0

32.2
23.0

16.0

Table 1. False alarm rate performance (xlO-3) of the VTM

detector at a clutter-edge with C = 10 db, design
Pfa = 10-3, and N = 24. Note that Pf, = 13x10-3 for
.
the OS(21) detector and 20x10-3 for the OS(20)
detector.

Figure 1. Block diagram of a typic'al CFAR detector

Rayleigh Clutter
1
1
2

I...

t l ,

Rayleigh Clutter

Exponential Clutter

2.4

1.7

3.6

2.9

5.0

4.0

k,

Pz

Figure 2. Block diagram of the VTM processor

Select

v ' ~ E ~ ~ ~

tt

sort
and Select
Kthsdest
Z

m
3

Table 4.

pd
0.52

Detection performance of the AOS detector with four

interfering targets in Rayleigh clutter, S = 20 db,
design Pfa = 10-3, N = 24, a0 = 0.01, ko = 20 and
k l = 24.

42.1.4
835