Robust signal detection using the bootstrap

This paper presents a CFAR detector based on the bootstrap for detecting signals with unknown amplitude, phase and frequency such as found in conventional pulsed radar and sonar systems. The detector is robust against non-Gaussian noise, and can still maintain the false alarm rate without much modification if consistent estimates are substituted for unknown parameters. Preliminary asymptotic results are given on the performance of the detector, and simulations are used to study the performance for small samples sizes.