A Nonparametric Approach to Signal Detection in Non-Gaussian Noise

This letter proposes a nonparametric detector, termed as Gini Correlation (GC), to solve the classical problem of detecting deterministic signals buried in impulsive noise. With the help of the popular Middleton's Class-A impulsive noise (MCAN) model, we derive the expectation and variance of GC under alternative hypothesis and null hypothesis, which, along with the central limit theorem, are further employed for determining the detection probability and the detection threshold. The results show that the proposed detector possesses a constant false alarm rate property. Monte Carlo simulations verify not only the correctness of our theoretical findings but also the superiority of GC to other state-of-the-art methods in terms of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and asymptotic relative efficiency (ARE) curves.