A new CFAR algorithm based on variable window for ship target detection in SAR images

Target detection in the multiscale situation where there exit multiple ship targets with different sizes is a challenging task due to the mismatch of the sizes of ship targets and fixed windows. A new constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm based on variable window for ship target detection in SAR images is proposed. First, the multiscale local contrast measure is introduced to estimate the ship target size without any prior knowledge about ships. Second, the size of neighborhood area is adaptively set and a transform algorithm is designed to enhance the contrast between targets and background. Finally, CFAR detection is implemented by adopting variable window to gain the accurate ship targets. Experimental results indicate that the proposed algorithm has better performance compared with other CFAR detection algorithms.