International Journal of Engineering and Technology Innovation, vol . 9, no. 4, 2019, pp. 314-326 Simple Communication Interface for a Radar Detector in the Moments Space Camilo Guillén * , Greysi Casas, David Frómeta, Nelson Chávez Department of Telecommunication and Telematics, Technological University of Havana José Antonio Echeverría, CUJAE, La Habana, Cuba Received 16 February 2019; received in revised form March 16 2019; accepted 29 April 2019 Abstract The method of Radar Target Detection by Analysis and Statistical Classification of the Cellular Emission (DRACEC) can be functionally divided into three fundamental stages: Acquisition, Adaptation, and Detection. During Acquisition it is required to continuously exchange information between the hardware in FPGA and the software, without affecting the performance of the latter. This paper proposes the simplest communication interface that satisfies these requirements when DRACEC is applied to a small searching window. The solution is implemented on the serial port and ensures that samples stored in FPGA are available at the computer for the remaining processing stages. One fundamental characteristic of the proposal is a protocol designed to control the communication flow, which is implemented through a dedicated program thread. This allows software performance to not deteriorate during communication and lays the foundations for using multithreading techniques to develop the stages of DRACEC. Keywords: DRACEC method, radar, communication interface, UART 1. Introduction The novel technique known as DRACEC [1-2] improve the detection probability for low signal-to-noise ratio environments [1]. Furthermore, it is applicable to scenarios where the statistical distributions of the random variables used for decision making are unknown or difficult to estimate. DRACEC is based on the use of large-size samples of parameters such as the amplitude, frequency, polarization, etc., of the signals scattered by the resolution cells that compose the surveillance region. As a fundamental characteristic, a classification vector (pattern) is obtained, whose components (features) are a determined number of moments of the selected signal parameters, enabling the classification of the resolution cells in one of two classes: background (target absent) or anomaly (target present). Since the decision is carried out through a finite set of moments, DRACEC is usually referred to as a detection method in the moment's space, which differentiates it from traditional techniques. In addition, the amplitude of the video signal at the radar receiver is the most commonly selected parameter, due to the simplicity in obtaining measurements. Taking into account that the random variables used for detection are a set of normal-distributed moments [1-2], DRACEC matches the environmental conditions better than methods based on processing the signal parameters, which assume models for their distributions. Therefore, by means of DRACEC, the problem of the a priori indetermination is significantly reduced. Another distinctive characteristic of DRACEC is the multidimensional approach to detection and the concept of anomaly-to-background ratio instead of the classical signal-to-noise ratio. This gives a higher detection and classification * Corresponding author. E-mail address: camilo.gs@tele.cujae.edu.cu Tel.: +53-7-266-33-34 brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Taiwan Association of Engineering and Technology Innovation: E-Journals