ASA 126th Meeting Denver 1993 October 4-8

4pUW8. Theoretical signal-to-noise gain formulas for energy signal bicorrelation and tricorrelation detection.

Lisa A. Pflug

Naval Res. Lab., Stennis Space Center, MS 39529-5004

George E. Ioup

Univ. of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148

Robert L. Field

Naval Res. Lab., Stennis Space Center, MS 39529-5004

Juliette W. Ioup

Univ. of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA

In the past the authors have examined energy signal detection and time delay estimation performance of ordinary and higher-order correlations using Monte Carlo simulations and hypothesis testing [for example, Pflug et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 91, 2763 (1992)]. For some circumstances higher-order detector performance and SNR gains can be predicted theoretically based on third- and fourth-order moments. SNR gain formulas for higher-order detectors have been derived for a probability of detection of 0.5 and are discussed in this paper. Comparisons of these theoretical results are made to simulations with a model signal whose moments can be varied. Validity of the theoretical results is confirmed with eight diverse test signals which have been used in previous simulation studies. The formulas make possible the calculation of minimum third, and fourth-order moment values needed for the bicorrelation and tricorrelation detectors, respectively, to outperform the cross-correlation detector. [Research supported by Office of Naval Research, Program Element 61153N, with technical management provided by NRLSSC.]