Bayesian Distributed Target Detectors in Compound-Gaussian Clutter Against Subspace Interference with Limited Training Data

In this article, the problem of Bayesian detecting rank-one distributed targets under subspace interference and compound Gaussian clutter with inverse Gaussian texture is investigated. Due to the clutter heterogeneity, the training data may be insufficient. To tackle this problem, the clutter speckle covariance matrix (CM) is assumed to obey the complex inverse Wishart distribution, and the Bayesian theory is utilized to obtain an effective estimation. Moreover, the target echo is assumed to be with a known steering vector and unknown amplitudes across range cells. The interference is regarded as a steering matrix that is linearly independent of the target steering vector. By utilizing the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT), a Bayesian interference-canceling detector that can work in the absence of training data is derived. Moreover, five interference-cancelling detectors based on the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimate of the speckle CM are proposed with the two-step GLRT, the Rao, Wald, Gradient, and Durbin tests. Experiments with simulated and measured sea clutter data indicate that the Bayesian interference-canceling detectors show better performance than the competitor in scenarios with limited training data.