Adaptive Radar Detection in Compound-Gaussian Environments with Missing Data

This paper addresses adaptive radar detection in scenarios with incomplete observations due to measurement errors, sensor failures, or outliers, where the target is embedded in compound Gaussian clutter with unknown covariance matrix. The detection problem is formulated as a binary hypothesis test, with a set of selection matrices introduced to represent the observations at each snapshot. At the stage of detector design, a two-step design strategy is employed: first, the Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) is derived assuming known covariance structure; then, the actual covariance matrix in the GLRT is replaced with its maximum likelihood estimate, which is calculated based on the non-missing components of the secondary data using an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm developed in this paper. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of these detectors in compound Gaussian clutter environments, showing superior performance compared to the existing detector designed for scenarios with Gaussian interference and missing data, as well as the classical linear imputation method.