In this paper, an altitude estimation technique for the radar target over the sea at low elevation angle is proposed for surface based phased array radar. The proposed method can be applied to conventional monopulse radar as well as multichannel digital array radar. The target altitude is obtained by maximum likelihood estimation technique. Reducing number of unknown parameters is achieved by introducing the precise specular multipath model tailored to the low elevation angle tracking operation. As a result, two frequency-independent parameters, the target altitude and the wave height are treated as unknown. Results of computer simulation indicate that the proposed method outperform conventional monopulse method under the specular multipath condition with and without frequency hopping operation.
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