Publications

Version: 1.0 Approved

LDO-ID 2013-07-26-01

Title Surface clutter model for real-time simulation of coherent radar modes

Abstract

"One of the most challenging tasks in the automatic detection operations of an airborne Doppler radar is the capability to distinguish the weak signals generated from targets with respect to the massive power backscattered from the terrain (ground clutter). Doppler airborne radars are sensible to the terrain echoes coming not only through the antenna main lobe, but also through the antenna side-lobes. These latter signals generally occupy the entire range-Doppler radar space. For this reason they cannot be easily rejected and affect, in non-easily predicable ways, the radar detection capabilities. Historically these effects were typically not modeled by radar simulators for the computational complexity of implementing a physical modelling of the phenomena compatible with the real-time constraints of the processing.
This paper proposes a physical model for the surface clutter, applicable to a real-time radar simulation. The model, implemented as a set of suitable algorithms on commercial modern computers, makes feasible to improve the faithfulness of the radar simulation introducing the surface clutter effects in the real-time models for the coherent automatic detection operations. The algorithm structure consists of two parallel processes. The former process operates a pre-calculation of the terrain surrounding the platform, generating a matrix of equivalent scatters. This processing includes a terrain interpolation in polar coordinates and also accounts for the occulting effects. The latter process computes the contributions of these scatters to the received signal (in the range-Doppler space) as defined by the waveform and generates the corresponding effects on the radar automatic detection capabilities"

Authors Cavallaro Stefano, Gordini Romolo

Type Paper for Seminar/Symposium/Conference

Media I/ITSEC 2013 - Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (02-05 December, Orlando Florida, USA)

Web site

Anno 2013

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