Unsupervised Affinity Propagation Clustering Based Clutter Suppression and Target Detection Algorithm for Non-Side-Looking Airborne Radar

Aimingat non-side-looking airborne radar, we propose a novel unsupervised affinity propagation (AP) clustering radar detection algorithm to suppress clutter and detect targets. The proposed method first uses selected power points as well as space-time adaptive processing (STAP) weight vector, and designs matrix-transformation-based weighted input data, with which the first unsupervised weighted AP clustering is proposed by means of their similarity matrix, responsibility values and availability values. Then, new reconstructed weighted power inputs are designed, and the second weighted AP clustering is proposed. Finally, with their cluster results, a detection-discriminant criterion is designed for the judgment of target detection, and simultaneously, the clutter is suppressed. Compared with the conventional and important STAP, ADC and JDL algorithms, and several SO-based, GO-based and OS-based CFAR algorithms, the proposed unsupervised algorithm achieves much higher probability of detection and provides distinctly superior target-detection performance. With reasonable computation time, it can better conquer the range dependence in characteristic of clutter and better process non-independent identically distributed (non-IID) samples of non-side-looking radar. Sufficient simulations are performed, and they demonstrate that the proposed unsupervised algorithm is preferable and advantageous.