Published in IET Signal Processing
Received on 24th December 2011
Revised on 29th March 2013
Accepted on 22nd April 2013
doi: 10.1049/iet-spr.2013.0024
ISSN 1751-9675
Near-optimal detection with constant false alarm ratio
in varying impulsive interference
Xutao Li
1
, Jun Sun
2
, Shouyong Wang
3
, Lisheng Fan
1
, Li Chen
1
1
Department of Electronic Engineering, Shantou University, Shantou, Guangdong, People’s Republic of China
2
Department of Electronics and Information Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei,
People’s Republic of China
3
Key Laboratory, Wuhan Radar Institute, Wuhan, Hubei, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: lixt@stu.edu.cn
Abstract: As an important class of non-Gaussian statistic model, α-stable distribution has received much attention because of its
generality to represent impul sive interference. Unfortunately, it does not have a closed-form probability density function (PDF)
except for a few cases. For this reason, suboptimal zero-memory non-linearity (ZMNL) function has to be used as an
approximation in designing locally optimal detector, such as classical Cauchy and Gaussian-tailed ZMNL (GZMNL). To
enhance the performance of detectors, the authors first investigate the approximate PDFs for the symmetric α-stable. In
particular, a simplified version of Cauchy–Gaussian mixture (CGM) model, called bi-parameter CGM (BCGM) model is
detailed. This BCGM model has a concise closed-form, and hence is more tractable than the classical Gaussian mixture
model and CGM model. Then based on the preset false alarm ratio (FAR), the test threshold is adaptively evaluated by using
BCGM to maintain a constant FAR. The authors further devise an algebraic-tailed ZMNL (AZMNL) with a simplified form.
Simulation results show that the detector with AZMNL outperforms the ones with classical Cauchy and GZMNL, and
achieves near-optimal performance in varying impulsive interference.
1 Introduction
The signal processing systems often encounter noise and
interference [1–5], among which the impulsive interference
has received much attention in recent years. A remarkable
nature of impulsive interference is that its density function
in the tail is heavier than that of Gaussian density [6, 7]. In
recent two decades, there has been a tremendous interest in
studying the symmetric α-stable (SαS) distribution which is
considered as a generalisation of Gaussian distribution [1–
3]. Moreover, it has been tested and found to match the real
data with excellent fidelity [8–11], similar to that of the
broadly accepted Middleton models [12, 13].
As a classical problem, signal detection in noisy
observation is usually viewed as the hypothesis testing in
inference [14] and has been implemented in a variety of
scenario, such as radar, sonar and communications [15–17].
In most of the previous work, the signal is assumed to be
corrupted by the Gaussian noise because of the central limit
theorem, and the linear detectors have been well developed.
However, when the impulsive interference appears, the
linear detector designed under the Gaussian assumption
loses its performance severely [18, 19].
The analytically optimal detector is feasible only when the
probability density function (PDF) of interference is
analytical known. Unfortunately, there are no closed forms
for the probability densities of SαS except for two special
cases, say Gaussian and Cauchy distributions [1].
In consistent with the scale mixtures in modelling
heavy-tailed distributions [6, 7], several approximation
mixture models have been proposed to approximate the
actual SαS’s PDF, such as Gaussian mixture model (GMM)
[20–22] derived from the subGaussian theory [1] and
Cauchy–Gaussian mixture (CGM) model [23, 24].
However, the GMM cannot capture the algebraic tails of
SαS with small number of Gaussian components M while
loses analytical convenience with large M. The CGM model
is computationally expensive in evaluating triple
parameters. To develop a tractable form, in [25], we have
briefly introduced a simplifi
ed CGM model with
bi-parameter called bi-parameter CGM (BCGM) model,
which is a valid approximation for SαS with α ∈ [1, 2].
Since too impulsive interference with α < 1 is infrequent in
practice, α ∈ [1, 2] is hereby taken as the practical
consideration. In this paper, we will detail the fact that th e
mixture of Cauchy densities can be regarded as another
approximation for SαS PDF. Such a fact gives a reasonable
support to the BCGM model.
In a real radar or sonar system, to achieve adaptive
detection with constant false alarm ratio (CFAR) [26, 27],
the test threshold should be adjusted according to the
preset false alarm ratio (FAR) in varying circumstance.
An analytical PDF of interference is expected in
solving such a problem. By using BCGM model, a
concise PDF, the relation between test threshold and FAR
can be evaluated handily, which indicates that the adaptive
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The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013 doi: 10.1049/iet-spr.2013.0024