Track-Before-Detect Algorithm for Airborne Radar in Compound Gaussian Clutter with Inverse Gaussian Texture

This paper deals with the weak target detection and tracking for airborne radar in compound Gaussian with inverse Gaussian texture (IGCG) distribution sea clutter. Combine with the characteristics of IGCG distribution clutter and the airborne radar, a track-before-detect algorithm based on dynamic programming (DP-TBD) is proposed in this paper. In this algorithm, the multi-frame test statistic based on generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) under the track-before-detect (TB-D) framework is derived, and then the dynamic programming (DP) algorithm is used to give the specific realization method for detecting and tracking target in the range-azimuth-doppler domain. Compared with the traditional algorithms, simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the detection and tracking performance for airborne radar in IGCG distribution clutter.