Effect of Background Estimation on the Sensitivity of Sonar or Radar Receivers

Abstract

Radar and sonar receivers usually operate in a noise background of unknown level. In order to maintain a constant false alarm rate, they often include circuits to estimate this background level. A technique is derived for determining the performance loss caused by background estimation. The loss is evaluated for several systems with Gaussian statistics and for narrow-band systems with square law, envelope, and logarithmic detectors. The loss depends on the type of system, the false alarm probability desired, and the size of the sample used in the background estimation.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 19, 1973
Accession Number
AD0775893

Entities

People

  • C. Nicholas Pryor
  • Gary M. Hess

Organizations

  • Naval Ordnance Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • C4I
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Background Noise
  • Classification
  • Computer Programs
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Estimators
  • False Alarms
  • Munitions
  • Numerical Integration
  • Ordnance Laboratories
  • Probability
  • Probability Density Functions
  • Radar Receivers
  • Sensitivity
  • Signal Processing
  • Statistics
  • Warning Systems

Readers

  • Acoustics.
  • Approximation Theory.
  • Radio communications and signal processing.