Abstract: CFAR detection of radar targets in heavy clutter background is an important part in radar signal processing. With appearance of LSI and high capability DSP, DSP technology is used in radar signal processing widely. How to realize signal processing effectively basing on high capability DSP is an important problem that radar engineers must consider. In this paper, the characteristics of ADSP21160 are introduced first, then the principle of radar CFAR detection in Rayleigh distributed clutter is discussed, and the way of realizing radar CFAR detection in clutter background based on ADSP21160 is proposed, and the results of simulation are provided at last.