Convolutive Complex-Valued Independent Component Analysis for Nonlinear Radar Signal Processing and Maritime Weak Target Detection

This paper first establishes a new complex independent component analysis (cICA) algorithm based on the spatiotemporal extension of complex-valued entropy bound minimization (CEBM) to separate received complex-valued radar signals. Next, we propose a new cICA-based detector with an open structure to find Swerling model targets, lognormal targets, and sea-surface small floating targets in coherent high-resolution maritime surveillance radars. The detector encountered three major problems when adopting cICA for detection and solved them using three effective suggestions. After performing cICA on the time series received by the radar, we obtained two different sources. Using the first and second theoretical and empirical moment estimates of the K-distribution, the target was selected between these two output source signals. Detector performance was verified quantitatively and qualitatively using the real-life IPIX radar database. Comprehensive experiments on this database with synthetic injected targets showed promising results. The computational time and sample size dependency of the proposed cICA algorithm were also discussed. Finally, a comparison of the detector with several novel detectors for detecting sea-surface floating small targets of the IPIX radar database demonstrated the proposed detector’s superiority.