Theoretical Analysis of Target Tracking in Ground Clutter by Airborne PulseDoppler Radars

摘要

Target tracking in ground clutter is an important function of airborne pulseDoppler radars. As a tool for analysing the performance of these radars, modifications to an existing computer model of a medium pulse repetition frequency airborne tracking radar have been made to include ground clutter. The clutter signal has been modelled as a Gaussian random field with uncorrelated increments. The field is characterised by the mean clutter power and examples of the mean clutter power are shown for straight and level and diving aircraft. A method of sampling a realisation of the clutter signal in the range-Doppler bins of the radar receiver is described. Examples of the clutter signal are shown for receivers utilising Dolph-Chebyshev weighted Doppler filters and simple pulse train or thirteen bit Barker coded waveforms. The process of pulse repetition frequency selection is considered in detail. Examples of the output from the computer model, both with and without clutter included, are also presented. The results of this analysis show that ground clutter has a significant impact on the way in which target tracking is implemented and needs to be included to accurately model the performance of the radar.