796

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2005

Threshold Setting Strategies for a Quantized Total Power Radiometer

Janne J. Lehtomki, Student Member, IEEE, Markku Juntti, Senior Member, IEEE, Harri Saarnisaari, Member, IEEE, and Sami Koivu, Student Member, IEEE

AbstractWe analyze the impact of a uniform quantizer on the false-alarm probability of a total power radiometer. Different possibilities to set the detection threshold are discussed. The main emphasis is on methods that use the estimated noise level. In particular, we analyze the cell-averaging (CA) constant false-alarm rate threshold setting strategy. The numerical results show that the CA strategy offers the desired false-alarm probability. Index TermsConstant false-alarm rate (CFAR), detection threshold, quantization, radiometer, signal detection.

native. It uses as a decision statistic the energy of the received signal [4], i.e.,

I. INTRODUCTION

HE DETECTION of unknown signal(s) is an important goal in electronic support (ES) [1] and radio monitoring. A recent detection application is nding signal-free frequency bands for cognitive radios [2], [3]. The (binary) detection problem can be formulated as choosing between the noise-only and the signal(s)-and-noise hypothesis , i.e., hypothesis the goal is to decide between

(1) where is the received real-valued signal sample at time instant , is the noise process sample, is a sample of is the total a typically unknown signal to be detected, and number of samples used for one decision. The detection is usually based on some statistic that is compared to a threshold. If the threshold is exceeded, it is decided is true. The probability of false alarm is the probathat bility that the decision statistic exceeds the threshold when only noise is present. Usually, the required probability of false alarm is specied, and the detection threshold is set so that the probability of the false alarm does not exceed the desired value. If the threshold is too high, false-alarm probability will be smaller than the desired one, and detection performance suffers. The likelihood ratio is the optimal decision statistic in the NeymanPearson sense. It often requires more information than is available or is too complex to implement. The total power radiometer (or the energy detector) is a simple yet powerful alterManuscript received March 18, 2005; revised May 16, 2005. This work was supported by the Finnish Defence Forces Technical Research Centre. The work of J. J. Lehtomki was also supported by the GETA Graduate School and the Nokia Foundation. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Dr. Olivier Besson. The authors are with the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, FIN-90014 Oulu, Finland (e-mail: janne.lehtomaki@ee.oulu.). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LSP.2005.855521

The received signal is usually quantized in practical equipment, and the detection decision is made based on the quantized received signal. Proper threshold setting may be difcult, especially when quantization is used and the noise variance is unknown. Expressions for the mean and variance of the quantized total power radiometer outputs with a white Gaussian input, taking into account the effects of the passband lter and saturation, have been derived in [5]. Although the goal therein was to measure the signal power (as in [6]), the mean and variance can also be used for evaluating the detection performance of a quantized radiometer with the normal approximation [2]. Quantized radiometer performance has been found with simulations in [7]. The noise process before quantization was assumed to be white and Gaussian, and the detection threshold of an analog total power radiometer was used. Noise level was estimated based on quantized reference samples in [8]. In cell-averaging constant false-alarm rate (CA-CFAR) detection [9], the detection threshold is the sum of the squared noise-only reference samples multiplied by a scaling factor. The strategy used in [8] is similar to CA-CFAR but with a different scaling factor. Previously, the effects of quantization in CA-CFAR signal detection have been theoretically studied in [10]. Therein, the order statistic (OS) CFAR detector was also studied. However, the analog square-law device was assumed so that the input follows the exponential distribution. In this letter, the false-alarm probability of a quantized radiometer using different threshold setting strategies is analyzed. The input is assumed to follow the Gaussian distribution. This letter is organized as follows. First, false-alarm probability corresponding to a xed threshold is found in Section II. Noise variance estimation based on quantized samples is discussed in Section III. In Section IV, we use a randomized decision rule that gives exactly the required false-alarm probability, assuming that the noise variance is known (or an accurate estimate is available). The main focus of this letter is analyzing false-alarm probability of a detector that uses the CA-CFAR strategy. The analysis is carried out in Section V. Numerical results are presented in Section VI, and the conclusions are drawn in Section VII.

1070-9908/$20.00 2005 IEEE

LEHTOMKI et al.: THRESHOLD SETTING STRATEGIES FOR A QUANTIZED TOTAL POWER RADIOMETER

797

, where is the ceiling function. Now, is the probability of a false alarm corresponding to the threshold is (7) One possibility is to use the detection threshold corresponding to an analog total power radiometer [7]. In that case, , , is the chi-square cumuwhere degrees of freedom, lative distribution function (CDF) with is the desired false-alarm probability [11]. It was and found in [7] that the actual probability of false alarm is different from the desired value, especially when the number of quantization bits is low. It is well known that quantization noise can be approximated to be zero-mean Gaussian with variance [8]. In this case, , i.e., the threshold depends also on the step size. III. NOISE LEVEL ESTIMATION BASED ON QUANTIZED SAMPLES Noise level estimation based on quantized reference samples is needed in various applications. For example, the detection threshold used in [7] requires knowledge of the noise level. Also, the randomized decision rule in Section IV requires knowledge of the noise level. The mean of the squared quantized noise-only samples normalized with the (known) step size is (8) where the index has been dropped because the samples are is (the quani.i.d. The maximum value of tization step size is so small that only the largest output values are selected), and the minimum value is 1/4 (the quantization step size is so large that only the smallest output values are selected). The variance of the input signal can be found with (see [12] for explicit results for a three-level quantizer) (9) The variance and, equivalently, can be estimated by substituting the sample mean in place of the statistical mean, i.e., by , where is the number of using noise-only reference samples. IV. EXACT RANDOMIZED DECISION RULE Let us denote the probability density function of , i.e., with (5) which can be easily found using the probability weights is Now, the probability density function of . (6) Let us assume that a xed threshold is used with a quantized total power radiometer. The equivalent integer-valued threshold The decision variable (4) has a nite number of possible output values. Therefore, using a randomized decision rule is necessary for obtaining arbitrary false-alarm probabilities and . If the observed [13]. It is specied by the threshold is larger than , an alarm always occurs. If , an alarm occurs with probability , for example, a random number generator is used within the intercept receiver. The proper is the maximum value satisfying threshold (10)

Fig. 1.

Uniform midriser quantizer with B = 2 quantization bits.

II. RADIOMETER WITH QUANTIZATION The quantized total power radiometer uses (2) where , where is assumed to be a deterministic , midriser quantization operator. It has output levels where the quantization levels are indexed with integer values , is the number of quantization bits, and is the quantization step so that the dy, as illustrated in Fig. 1. Uniform quannamic range is tization is widely used in practice due to its simplicity. In the context of the energy detection, half of the quantization levels are wasted because the sign information is not needed. The detection threshold is set according to the properties of . Noise is assumed to the detector in the noise-only case be a discrete, zero-mean, white Gaussian random process with variance . Thus, the probability that the th quantization level of the midriser quantizer is chosen is [5], [6] erf erf (3)

where erf is the error function, , and . If , erf . If , erf . Let denote the indices of the chosen quantization levels for the received signal in the , i.e, current observation interval, where the quantized values are . Instead of (2), it is more convenient to use the equivalent integer-valued decision variable (4)

798

IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING LETTERS, VOL. 12, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2005

and the corresponding randomization factor is [14] (11) By using the randomization factor (11), the exact required falsealarm probability is obtained, assuming that is known. If it is estimated, a large number of reference samples may be necessary so that false-alarm probability is close to the desired value. It may be desirable to choose so that the randomization factor is 0 or 1 (no randomization) [13]. V. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE CA-CFAR STRATEGY If the noise variance is unknown, and reference samples are , where available, it is intuitive to use as a threshold (12) (zero-mean) reference is the variance estimate based on , and is a scaling factor chosen so that, on the avsamples erage, the false-alarm probability has the desired value. Using the results in the CA-CFAR literature (see, for example, [15] and [16]), the correct scaling factor for a detector without quantization is found to be (13) where is the (Fisher) CDF. The scaling factor (13) gives exactly the desired false-alarm probability. When the number of reference samples increases, the scaling factor approaches 1. In other words, when the number of reference samples is large, less scaling is needed. has been used in [8]. The theoretical The scaling factor (assuming no false-alarm probability corresponding to quantization) is (14) When quantization is performed, the correct CA-CFAR scaling factor depends on the unknown . Therefore, it is not possible to always use the correct scaling factor. Instead, or the scaling factor for example, the scaling factor (13) is used. We evaluate the exact false-alarm probability corresponding to an arbitrary scaling factor and some . Let denote the indices of the chosen quantization levels for the reference signal, i.e., . Now
Fig. 2. False-alarm probabilities:

N = 512 and N

= 256.

where , and conditional false-alarm probability, assuming

. The , is (15)

Now, the probability of false alarm can be found with (16) where denotes the density function of the found [see (6)]. Together, (15) similarly as the density function of and (16) allow the calculation of the theoretical false-alarm probability of the quantized total power radiometer using the CA-CFAR threshold setting method. In [10], similar methods have been used for investigating data quantization effects for exponentially distributed input. The exponential distribution results, for example, from squaring the envelope of a complex Gaussian random variable or from summing the squares of two i.i.d. real-valued Gaussian random variables. It was found that 612 quantization bits are typically necessary. VI. NUMERICAL RESULTS Fig. 2 shows false-alarm probabilities as a function of the dy, , and . namic range when , The theoretical false-alarm probability corresponds to and no quantization was calculated using (14). The CA refers to the scaling factor (13). It can been seen that when the CA , the system is operating propscaling factor is used and erly when dynamic range . When the CA scaling , it should be that . factor is used and gives signicantly higher than deThe scaling factor sired false-alarm probabilities. The results when (not shown here) were similar to those in Fig. 2, except that the were closer to false-alarm probabilities obtained using the desired value. Let us now study the situation where the CA is used and . Fig. 3 shows the false-alarm probabilities as a function of the dynamic range with different reference set

LEHTOMKI et al.: THRESHOLD SETTING STRATEGIES FOR A QUANTIZED TOTAL POWER RADIOMETER

799

), the lower and upper bounds are and . . The allowed values of are in the range Equivalently, for a xed step size, the noise standard deviation . is allowed to have values in the range An automatic gain control (AGC) device could be used for controlling the standard deviation so that it belongs to the allowed range. VII. CONCLUSION A quantized total power radiometer was studied in two cases: 1) the noise power is unknown and 2) the noise power is known. In case 1), the focus was on analyzing the CA-CFAR threshold setting strategy with different scaling factors. In case 2), three different threshold setting strategies were studied and compared. The threshold corresponding to the Gaussian quantization noise assumption performed surprisingly well. Typically, about three to four quantization bits are required for obtaining the desired false-alarm probability (both cases). REFERENCES
[1] D. C. Schleher, Introduction to Electronic Warfare. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1986. [2] A. Sahai, N. Hoven, and R. Tandra, Some fundamental limits on cognitive radio, in Proc. Allerton Conf. Communication, Control, Computing, Monticello, IL, Oct. 2004. [3] S. Haykin, Cognitive radio: Brain-empowered wireless communications, IEEE J. Sel. Areas Commun., vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 201220, Feb. 2005. [4] H. Urkowitz, Energy detection of unknown deterministic signals, Proc. IEEE, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 523531, Apr. 1967. [5] J. E. Ohlson and J. E. Swett, Digital radiometer performance, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. AES-9, no. 6, pp. 864874, Nov. 1973. [6] M. A. Fischman and A. W. England, Sensitivity of a 1.4 GHz directsampling digital radiometer, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 37, no. 5, pp. 21722180, Sep. 1999. [7] S. Koivu, H. Saarnisaari, and M. Juntti, Quantization and dynamic range effects on the energy detection, in Proc. 6th Nordic Signal Processing Symp., Espoo, Finland, Jun. 2004, pp. 264267. [8] , Comparison of quantized power-law based intercept receivers, in Proc. IEEE Military Communications Conf., Monterey, CA, Nov. 2004. [9] P. P. Gandhi and S. A. Kassam, Analysis of CFAR processors in nonhomogeneous background, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 427445, Jul. 1988. [10] P. P. Gandhi, Data quantization effects in CFAR signal detection, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 32, no. 4, pp. 12771289, Oct. 1996. [11] R. A. Dillard and G. M. Dillard, Detectability of Spread-Spectrum Signals. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 1989. [12] J. R. Piepmeier and A. J. Gasiewski, Digital correlation and microwave polarimetry: Analysis and demonstration, IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens., vol. 39, no. 11, pp. 23922410, Nov. 2001. [13] P. Willett and D. Warren, The suboptimality of randomized tests in distributed and quantized detection systems, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 355361, Mar. 1992. [14] Y. I. Han and T. Kim, Randomized fusion rules can be optimal in distributed NeymanPearson detectors, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 12811288, Jul. 1997. [15] D. A. Shnidman, Radar detection probabilities and their calculation, IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 928950, Jul. 1995. [16] J. J. Lehtomki, M. Juntti, and H. Saarnisaari, CFAR strategies for channelized radiometer, IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1316, Jan. 2005.

Fig. 3.

False-alarm probabilities: P

= 10

, N = 512, and B = 3.

Fig. 4. False-alarm probabilities P = 10 , N = 512, three quantization bits (B = 3), and  is assumed to be known.

sizes. It is observed that is not enough. With , , which the results are quite close to the situation with was discussed above. Fig. 4 shows the false-alarm probabilities when the noise variis assumed to be known. The ance before quantization threshold setting strategies analyzed were 1) the threshold corre[7], 2) the threshold sponding to an analog radiometer corresponding to the Gaussian quantization noise assumption , and 3) the randomized decision [8] with rule. In addition to the theoretical results found with the method presented in Section II, simulation results are shown. It is seen that the threshold in 1) is not a good choice. The threshold in 2) yields surprisingly good performance, when the dynamic range . The strategy in 3) gives exactly the desired false-alarm probability, no matter what the dynamic range is. With four quantization bits, the threshold in 2) gives good . results when . Let us assume that it is required that For example, in the situation shown in Fig. 2 (with CA and