ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Signal Process.
Sec. Radar Signal Processing
Improving Aerial Target Detection for 3D Radar Based on Two-Stage CFAR Method with Adaptive Clutter Distribution Estimation
Provisionally accepted
- 1Viettel High Technology Industries Corp, Hanoi, Vietnam
- 2Vietnam National University University of Engineering and Technology, Hanoi, Vietnam
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The paper deals with the problem of enhancing aerial target detection for a 3D radar. The novel approach, which incorporates both signal and data processing, is introduced. In order to increase the target's SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), two consecutive transmit beams are used, and for each transmit beam, three beams are received simultaneously. All received beams are then processed. A two-stage CFAR method is proposed for improving target detection. At the 1st-stage CFAR, the global CA-CFAR is applied to identify all possible target candidates (plots). After that, unsupervised machine learning is used to separate interference regions. For each interference region, the truncated probability density function of interference is estimated, and then a local CFAR (2nd-stage CFAR) is applied to reduce false plots while keeping target plots. The proposed approach is an extension of that given in the recent publications. The tests on a 3D surveillance radar have shown the effectiveness of the proposed approach on aerial target detection in comparison with previous methods.
Keywords: Radar target detection, Radar signal processing, CFAR, DBSCAN, clutter distribution estimation
Received: 19 Aug 2025; Accepted: 30 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Vu Hop, Cao Quyen and Van Loi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Tran Vu Hop, hoptv1@viettel.com.vn
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