Improved Empirical Model for Radar Sea Clutter Reflectivity.

摘要

The most fundamental characteristic of sea clutter, as used in radar performance evaluation, is its apparent reflectivity, used here as a reminder that any measurement of sea clutter reflectivity includes the effects of propagation and shadowing close to the sea surface. Sea clutter reflectivity depends on many factors including sea state, wind velocity, grazing angle, polarization and radar frequency. A comprehensive tabulation of measurements from approximately 60 sources is included in the 1991 edition of Nathanson's book and probably represents the most complete data base of sea clutter reflectivity available to the radar systems engineer. A widely used sea clutter model proposed by Horst et al. (1978) (GIT model) has found widespread acceptance in the radar community. However, the model does not always agree with the tabulated measured sea clutter data, especially at low sea states. The discrepancies are at times quite large and may lead to overly optimistic radar performance predictions. In this report, a new empirical model for sea clutter reflectivity is presented based entirely on the experimental results presented by Nathanson. This model is defined as a function of frequency, polarization, sea state and grazing angle.