Low-Angle Radar Land Clutter Measurements and Empirical Models

Radar land clutter constitutes the unwanted radar echoes returned from the earth’s surface that compete against and interfere with the desired echoes returned from targets of interest, such as aircraft or other moving or stationary objects. To be able to knowledgeably design and predict the performance of radars operating to provide surveillance of airspace, detection and tracking of targets, and other functions in land clutter backgrounds out to the radar horizon, radar engineers require accurate descriptions of the strengths of the land clutter returns and their statistical attributes as they vary from pulse to pulse and cell to cell. The problem of bringing statistical order and predictability to land clutter is particularly onerous at the low angles (at or near grazing incidence) at which surface-sited radars illuminate the clutter-producing terrain, where the fundamental difficulty arising from the essentially infinite variability of composite terrain is exacerbated by such effects as specularity against discrete clutter sources and intermittent shadowing. Thus, predicting the effects of low-angle land clutter in surface radar was for many years a major unsolved problem in radar technology.

Từ khóa: Low-Angle Radar Land Clutter, radar technology, Empirical Models, công nghệ rada, kỹ thuật thiết kế, thiết kế rada