Modified Sparse Subspace Clustering for Radar Detection in Non-stationary Clutter

Detecting targets embedded in a noisy environment is an important topic in adaptive array processing. In the traditional statistical framework, this problem is addressed through a binary hypothesis test, which usually requires the estimation of side parameters from secondary data. The latter are assumed to be homogeneous and targetfree, which is in practice questionable. Indeed, secondary data are usually corrupted by radar clutters and/or jammers which can be non-stationary and locally low rank. Fortunately, the latter behaviors can be well acknowledged by a union-of-subspaces model. In this work, we propose a modified subspace clustering model which can be solved using convex optimization algorithms. In the context of multiple sparse target detection and localization, a comparison is performed with various robust detection methods exhibiting advantages and drawbacks of the proposed one.