Sea Clutter & Surface

Clutter

Introduction
Terms are defined by the operational
purpose of the radar
Target detection is degraded by
Clutter
Changes in propagation of radio waves
Intentional/unintentional jamming

In order to optimize radar signal

processing methods the effects the
surface and volume clutter have on radar
detection capabilities have to be known

Radar systems detect

targets
by
examining
Courtesy of SELEX S.I.
reflected
energy,
or returns, from objects
Along with target echoes,
returns come from the sea
surface,
land
masses,
buildings, rainstorms, and
other sources
Much of this clutter is far
stronger
than
signals
received from targets of
interest

The main challenge to

radar
systems
is
discriminating
these weaker
The IEEE Standard
Radar Definitions (Std 686-1990) defines
target
echoes
fromprocessing
clutter
coherent
signal
as echo integration, filtering, or
detection
Coherent
signal of the received signals and its
using the amplitude
processing
phase referred to that of a reference oscillator or to the
techniques signal.
are used to this
transmitted

Clutter environment
Target detection in radar systems is
based on the amplitude and phase
characteristics of the return echo signal
Doppler effect provides means for
detecting a moving target in the
presence of clutter whose amplitude
exceeds that of the target
Methods are MTI- (moving target
indication) and Doppler processing

CLUTTERS
Clutter refers to radio frequency (RF) echoes
returned from targets which are uninteresting to
the radar operators.
Such targets include natural objects such as
ground, sea, precipitation (such as rain, snow or
hail), sand storms, animals (especially birds),
atmospheric turbulence, and other atmospheric
effects, such as ionosphere reflections, meteor
trails, and three body scatter spike.
Clutter may also be returned from man-made
objects such as buildings and, intentionally, by
radar countermeasures such as chaff.

 Clutter may also originate from

multipath echoes from valid targets
due to ground
reflection,
atmospheric ducting or ionospheric
reflection/refraction.
The basic types of clutter can be
summarized as follows:
Surface Clutter
Sea Clutter

Surface Clutter
Ground or sea returns are typical surface
clutter.
Returns from geographical land masses are
generally stationary, however, the effect of
wind
on trees etc means that the
target can introduce a Doppler Shift to the
radar return.
Doppler shift : to remove unwanted signals in
the signal processing part of a radar system.
Clutter returned from the sea generally also
has movement associated with the waves.

Sea Clutter
Sea-clutter are disturbing radar-echoes
of sea wave crests. This clutter gets also
a Doppler- speed by the wind.
Eg: the scenario moves away, i.e.
changes with time, while for ground
clutter it stays the same. Therefore, in
practice, Sea-clutter is very difficult to
control without some loss in detection.
Theradial speedof the waves is very
small, is cleaned by the MTI system
very clearly.

Radar Detection
Problem
The radar scenario involves
a transmitter and a receiver, at the
same location (monostatic configuration), equipped with an array
of sensors, a target at a certain distance from the array (range)
in the far zone, and a narrowband signal that travels the roundtrip between the radar and the target.
The received
signals will always
contain a component
due to receiver
noise and may
contain components
due to both desired
targets and
undesired
interference
(jamming and
clutter).

What is the clutter?

Clutter refers to radio frequency (RF) echoes returned
from

targets

which

are

uninteresting

to

the

radar

operators and interfere with the observation of useful

signals.
Such targets include natural objects such as ground, sea,
precipitations (rain, snow or hail), sand storms, animals
(especially birds), atmospheric turbulence, and other
atmospheric effects, such as ionosphere reflections and
meteor trails.
Clutter may also be returned from man-made objects such
as buildings and, intentionally, by radar countermeasures
such as chaff.

Radar
clutter
Radar clutter is defined as unwanted echoes, typically from
the ground, sea, rain or other atmospheric phenomena.
These unwanted returns may affect the radar performance and
can even obscure the target of interest.
Hence clutter returns must be taken into account in designing a
radar system.

Towards this goal, a clutter model assumption is necessary!

The function of the clutter model is to define a consistent
theory whereby a physical model results in an analytical
model which can be used for radar design and performance
analysis.

Clutter reflectivity
A perfectly smooth and flat conducting surface acts as a
mirror, producing a coherent forward reflection, with the
angle of incidence equal to the angle of reflection. If the
surface has some roughness, the forward scatter component
is reduced by diffuse, non-coherent scattering in other
directions.
radar

For monostatic radar,

clutter is the diffuse
backscatter in the
direction towards the
radar

specular reflection
i=r
smooth
surface
specular
component

diffuse
component

rough surface

Radar Equation and propagation factor F

For monostatic radar, received power Pr from a target

with RCS is
2 2
PG

Pr t 3 4 F 4
4 R

Pt = transmit power
G = antenna gain
R = distance of target from antenna
F = the pattern-propagation factor, the ratio of field
strength at a point to that which would be present if
free-space propagation had occurred
A clutter measurement provides either F4 or oF4.
Even so, normally the data are reported as being or
o.

Sea clutter: Dependence on

grazing angle

At near vertical incidence, the backscatter is quasispecular and varies inversely with surface roughness with
a maximum at vertical incidence for a perfectly smooth
surface.
At medium grazing angles the reflectivity shows a lower
dependence on grazing angle (plateau region).

0 dB

10 log O

Below some critical

angle
(~ 10, depending on
the roughness) the
reflectivity reduces
rapidly with smaller
grazing angles
(interference region,
where propagation is
strongly affected by
multipath scattering

0o

GRAZING ANGLE

90o

Empirical model for sea clutter

0
GIT model: Wind speed
dependence
HH POL, 10 GHz
Cross-wave direction,
2 m signif. wave height,
winds 3, 5, 10, 20 m/s
oF4 increases with wind
speed
Critical angle unchanged,
because wave height
assumed fixed.

Empirical model for sea

clutter 0

GIT model: Dependence on significant

wave height h1/3
HH POL, 10 GHz
Cross-wave direction,
10 m/s wind speed,
h1/3 = 0.5, 2, and 6 m
In plateau region, oF4 is
independent of h1/3 (for
fixed wind speed)
oF4 increases with h1/3
(multipath reduces critical
angle) at angles < 1o

Empirical model for sea

clutter 0

GIT model: Comparison between

HH and VV POL, 10 GHz
Wind speed/wave height in
equilibrium
oF4 increases with wind
speed and h1/3
HH/VV ratio increases with
increased surface
roughness and reduced
grazing angle
HH>VV at small angles under
rough conditions at 1.25
and 10 GHz

Radar clutter
modeling
In the quest for better performance, the resolution capabilities
of radar systems have been improved
For detection performance, the belief originally was that a
higher resolution radar system would intercept less clutter than
a lower resolution system, thereby increasing detection
performance
However, as resolution has increased, the clutter statistics
have no longer been observed to be Gaussian, and the detection
performance has not improved directly
The radar system is now plagued by target-like spikes that
give rise to non-Gaussian observations
These spikes are passed by the detector as targets at a much
higher false alarm rate (FAR) than the system is designed to
tolerate
The reason for the poor performance can be traced to the fact
that the traditional radar detector is designed to operate
against Gaussian noise
New clutter models and new detection strategies are required
EGO Workshop 2012 - October 15-17,
to reduce the effects of the spikes and to improve detection

Sea clutter
PSD
The relative motion of the sea surface with respect to
the radar causes an intrinsic Doppler shift of the return
from individual scatterers.
Because the motion of the scattering elements have
varying directions and speeds the total echo contains
a spectrum of Doppler frequencies.
Two effects are of interest:
the spectral shape and width
the mean Doppler shift of the entire spectrum.

Sea clutter
PSD
The spectrum of sea clutter is sometimes assumed to have
Gaussian shape. An approximate relationship between the
-3dB bandwidth f of the spectrum and sea state S
(Douglas scale) has been derived by Nathanson:

f 3.6 f 0( GHz ) S
The standard deviation of the Gaussian spectrum is
related to f by the expression:

f 0.42f
Recently more complex and realistic models have
been proposed for sea clutter PSD. We are going to
analyze them later on.

Sea clutter: stationary or nonstationary process?

Large-scale and small-scale

components
Bragg
waves:
C0
Wind drift: Dw
Long waves: VOR

Current: VC

Bragg scattering: the return signals

from scatterers with wavelength B
reinforce each other since they are in
phase

0
B
2cos 0

Large-scale
structure
changes
the
distance between the antenna and the
patch, tilts and advects the small-scale
structure

2cos 0
fD
(C0 VOR Dw Vc )
0

fD

g
2 B

C0 phase velocity
of Bragg waves
VOR orbital
velocity: periodic
Dw wind drift
Vc current
velocity

Ground clutter: range spectral analysis

The range PSD is almost flat.
The correlation time of ~100 ns
(~ one pulse length).
provides frequency content over
the complete Nyquist frequency
range.
The assumption usually made
in adaptive radar detection of
independence of the data from
different range cells seems
to be reasonable in the Wolseley
data.
Owing to the heterogeneity of the spatial scattering ensemble in
open farmland terrain (strong discrete sources dispersed over a
weakly scattering medium), the returned signal from the scanning
antenna largely decorrelates from one spatial cell to the next,
whether the variation is in the range direction or in the azimuth