Effect of a Forest Environment on the Performance of Doppler Radar Systems

摘要

The aim of the report is to examine the effect of a forest environment on the performance of a remote sensing system that detects the Doppler-shifted signal scattered by moving objects. For this purpose, the influence of the terrain on the radar equation is determined by estimating the additional path loss due to the presence of dissipative media between the transmitter antenna and the moving scatterer. For most situations of practical importance, it is shown that the additional path loss can be expressed in terms of a terrain factor, which accounts for the presence of both the foliage and the ground. This terrain loss is evaluated for the case of a moving target located in the vegetation, and for a transmitter antenna that may be placed either inside the vegetation or above the tree tops. The calculated results are given for a wide range of distances between the antenna and the target, for various antenna heights and for different types of wooded areas. (Author)