An Information Elasticity Framework for the Adaptive Matched Filter

The adaptive matched filter (AMF) uses a number of training samples observed by the radar to estimate the unknown disturbance covariance matrix of a cell under test. In general, as the number of homogeneous training samples increases, the detection performance of the AMF improves up to a theoretical limit (defined by the performance of a matched filter detector where the disturbance covariance is known). However, radar data are nonhomogeneous in practice. Consequently, a high number of training samples is typically undesirable, since nonhomogeneous training data cause detection performance to suffer. Thus, a decision maker (DM) must consider these tradeoffs when selecting this number of training samples, along with other decision parameters for the AMF. Using the concept of information elasticity, this tradeoff behavior is characterized for decisions that are relevant to a DM. A simple user defined constraint function is proposed, characterizing the relative cost of selecting different decisions. Using a multi-objective optimization (MOO) technique known as compromise programming, information overload is observed, in that increasing the cost of decisions improves performance up to a point, beyond which increasing the cost no longer provides meaningful benefit. Using this framework, a cost-efficient solution is selected.