A Novel Weak Target Detection Strategy for Moving Active Sonar

In this paper we present an algorithm combined underwater space-time adaptive processing (STAP) model with dynamic programming based track-before-detect (DP-TBD) strategy to solve weak target detection problem for the moving active sonar. As a preliminary step the STAP model for underwater environment is introduced to coherently suppress the reverberation data caused by platform motion and to improve the signal-to-reverberation ratio (SRR). Then, resorting to GLRT and ad hoc procedures, we derive adaptive constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) detectors for the homogeneous underwater environment. Finally, we use the DP-TBD strategy to detect the presence of target by taking the test statistics as the scoring function of strategy. Simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed STAP-DP-TBD method has a better detection performance compared to the traditional reverberation suppressing method.