Design and analysis of fractal detector for high resolution radars

Recently, fractal geometry has been used as a tool for improving the detection of targets in radar systems. The fractal dimension is utilized as a feature to distinguish between target and clutter in fractal detectors. In this paper, a general model is proposed for the target and clutter signals in high resolution radar (HRR). The fractal dimensions of the clutter and the target plus clutter are evaluated. Performing statistical tests on the distribution of the fractal dimension, it is proved that a gaussian distribution can approximately model the distribution of the fractal dimension for HRR signals. The fractal detector is designed based on the gaussian distribution of the fractal dimension and its performance is compared with a semi-optimum detector. It is demonstrated that the fractal detector has great capabilities in the rejection of colored clutter. Moreover, we show that the fractal detector is CFAR, i.e., the probability of false alarm remains approximately constant in different interference powers.