Date of Award

1994

Degree Name

M.S. in Electrical Engineering

Abstract

In general, radar clutter may be defined as unwanted radar echo. Its name is descriptive of the fact that such echoes can 'clutter' the radar receiver and make the detection of wanted target signals difficult to achieve. Examples of unwanted echoes, or clutter are the reflections from land, sea, rain, birds, buildings, chaff, clear-air turbulence, and other atmospheric effects, as well as from ionized media such as the aurora and meteor trails. The echo from the surface of the sea often places severe limits on the differentiation of backscatter returns from ships, aircraft, missiles, and other targets of interest that share the radar resolution cell with the sea. Since the sea presents a dynamic, endlessly variable return to the radar, an understanding of sea clutter will not only aid in finding the suitable models to describe the surface scattering, the knowledge of complex: behavior of the sea, but also the environmental parameters. For example, local wind speed, wind direction, sea state, sea temperature, rain fall, oil slicks are variables that affect the clutter measurements. The sea echo also depends on such radar parameters as frequency, polarization, and grazing angle. Many sea clutter models and works can be traced back to World War II, and are described in an MIT Radiation Laboratory book edited by Kerr [1] . Although there is much that is known about the nature of the sea surface, and environmental parameters, it is often difficult to collect data at sea under the controlled and reproducible conditions necessary to establish quantitative causal relationships. An electronic sea clutter signal generator was created to provide reproducible clutter data to aid in developing quantitative causal relationships for the radar return signal. This paper describes the creation of the generator.

Keywords

Radar Interference Mathematical models, Signal generators Design and construction, Signal processing Digital techniques

Rights Statement

Copyright © 1994, author

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