An Improved CFAR Scheme for Man-Made Target Detection in High Resolution SAR Images

CFAR is a widely used algorithm for target detection in SAR images. The simplicity of computation and stable performance make it a key role in practice. However, for man-made target detection, conventional CFAR has a limited performance because of the non-adaptive processing window and the varieties of categories, sizes and structures of targets. In order to detect man-made targets with different size and complex structures in high resolution SAR images, an improved CFAR algorithm with an adaptive processing window named Adaptive-Window CFAR is proposed. A global guard window obtained by pre-detection adaptively is used to take place of the guard window in conventional CFAR makes AW -CFAR an algorithm with both adaptive threshold and adaptive processing window. In this case, the size of detectable targets is not fixed anymore and targets of different sizes and complex structures are detectable in AW-CF AR. Images with different resolutions and environments, which contain different categories of man-made targets, are used in the experiments. The experimental results show that the AW -CFAR inherits the simplicity of computation and stable performance of the conventional CFAR and has a better performance of man-made target detection in high resolution SAR images.