Design of generalised 2D adaptive sidelobe blanking detectors using the detection margin

We consider the radar detection problem with adaptive arrays in practical situations where the training data differ from the test data due to surprise interference (non-homogeneous scenario). We develop a general 2-step detection and sidelobe blanking procedure which can be applied to any kind of adaptive weight vector. For sidelobe blanking a generalised adaptive guard channel is developed which is based on the outputs of all array channels. For setting the thresholds the known theoretical results for classical GLRT, AMF and ACE tests are used as initial values. For fine tuning we introduce the detection margin as a direction sensitive criterion against inhomogeneous interference. Simulations with various adaptive algorithms and adaptive guard channels verify the usefulness of this strategy to design the tests.