Information Geometry for Radar Target Detection with Total Jensen–Bregman Divergence

This paper proposes a radar target detection algorithm based on information geometry. In particular, the correlation of sample data is modeled as a Hermitian positive-definite (HPD) matrix. Moreover, a class of total Jensen–Bregman divergences, including the total Jensen square loss, the total Jensen log-determinant divergence, and the total Jensen von Neumann divergence, are proposed to be used as the distance-like function on the space of HPD matrices. On basis of these divergences, definitions of their corresponding median matrices are given. Finally, a decision rule of target detection is made by comparing the total Jensen-Bregman divergence between the median of reference cells and the matrix of cell under test with a given threshold. The performance analysis on both simulated and real radar data confirm the superiority of the proposed detection method over its conventional counterparts and existing ones.