Radar sea clutter analysis has been an important area of radar research for many years. Very limited research has been carried out on coherent monostatic sea clutter analysis and even less on bistatic sea clutter. This has left a significant gap in the global scientific knowledge within this area. This thesis describes research carried out to analyse, quantify and model coherent sea clutter statistics from multiple radar sources. The ultimate goal of the research is to improve maritime radars' ability to compensate for clutter and achieve effective detection of targets on or over the sea surface. The first analyses used monostatic data gathered during the fight trials of the Thales Searchwater 2000 AEW radar. A further sea clutter trials database from CSIR was then used to investigate the variation of clutter statistics with look angle and grazing angle. Finally simultaneous monostatic and bistatic sea clutter data recorded in South Africa using the S-band UCL radar system NetRAD were analysed. No simultaneous monostatic and bistatic coherent analysis has ever been reported before in the open literature. The datasets recorded included multiple bistatic angles at both horizontal and vertical polarisations. Throughout the analysis real data have been compared to accepted theoretic models of sea clutter. An additional metric of comparison was investigated relating to the area of information theoretic techniques. Information theory is a significant subject area, and some concepts from it have been applied in this research. In summary this research has produced quantifiable and novel results on the characteristics of sea clutter statistics as a function of Doppler. Analysis has been carried out on a wide range of monostatic and bistatic data. The results of this research will be extremely valuable in developing sea clutter suppression algorithms and thus improving detection performance in future maritime radar designs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:626244 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Ritchie, M. A. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1397655/ |
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