Radar Properties of Non-Rayleigh Sea Clutter

Measurements of sea clutter at low grazing angles using high- resolution radar show that the probability density p(x) of envelope detected sea clutter is not Rayleigh. Using the composite surface scattering model, a special varying clutter density p(x|?0) is proposed and is used to explain the non-Rayleigh nature of clutter. Since the clutter distribution has an enormous effect on the performance of a radar, the variation of the clutter densities, p(x) and p(x|?0), with various radar parameters such as frequency, pulsewidth, and polarization is found. Finally, a simulation of the composite surface scattering model is performed, and it verifies the effect of the various parameters on p(x).     

HRR Detector for Slow-Moving Targets in Sea Clutter

The radar detection of targets in the presence of sea clutter has historically relied upon the radial velocity of targets with respect to the radar platform either by exploiting the relative target Dopplers (for targets with sufficient radial velocity) or by discerning the paths targets traverse from scan to scan. For targets with little to no radial velocity component, though, it can become quite difficult to differentiate targets from the surrounding sea clutter. This paper addresses the detection of slow-moving targets in sea clutter using a high resolution radar (HRR) such that the target has perceptible extent in range. Under the assumption of completely random sea clutter spikes based on an epsiv-contaminated mixture model with the signal and clutter powers known, optimal detection performance results from using the likelihood ratio test (LRT). However, for realistic sea clutter, the clutter spikes tend to be a localized phenomenon. Based upon observations from real radar data measurements, a heuristic approach exploiting a salient aspect of the idealized LRT is developed which is shown to perform well when applied to real measured sea clutter.     

基于实测数据的海杂波时空相关性分析

海杂波的相关特性分为时间相关性和空间相关性,二者均与雷达系统参数、环境条件等多种因素有关。文章利用X波段雷达实测海杂波数据,重点研究了不同极化条件下海杂波的时间相关性、高低典型海况和不同入射余角条件下的海杂波距离向和方位向空间相关性。经大量实测数据验证表明,极化方式对海杂波强时间相关性影响较小,海杂波距离向空间相关性受海况影响较大、方位向相邻分辨单元空间相关性较弱,这些结论对于海杂波中目标检测方法优化设计具有重要意义。     

Detection of small objects in clutter using a GA-RBF neural network

Detection of small objects in a radar or satellite image is an important problem with many applications. Due to a recent discovery that sea clutter, the electromagnetic wave backscatter from a sea surface, is chaotic rather than purely random, computational intelligence techniques such as neural networks have been applied to reconstruct the chaotic dynamic of sea clutter. The reconstructed sea clutter dynamical system which usually takes the form of a nonlinear predictor does not only provide a model of the sea scattering phenomenon, but it can also be used to detect the existence of small targets such as fishing boats and small fragments of icebergs by observing abrupt changes in the prediction error. We applied a genetic algorithm (GA) to obtain an optimal reconstruction of sea clutter dynamic based on a radial basis function (RBF) neural network. This GA-RBF uses a hybrid approach that employes a GA to search for the optimum values of the following RBF parameters: centers, variance, and number of hidden nodes, and uses the least square method to determine the weights. It is shown here that if the functional form of an unknown nonlinear dynamical system can be represented exactly using an RBF net (i.e., no approximation error), this GA-RBF approach can reconstruct the exact dynamic from its time series measurements. In addition to the improved accuracy in modeling sea clutter dynamic, the GA-RBF is also shown to enhance the detectability of small objects embedded in the sea. Using real-life radar data that are collected in the east coast of Canada by two different radar systems: a ground-based radar and a satellite equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), we show that the GA-RBF network is a reliable detector for small surface targets in various sea conditions and is practical for real-life search and rescue, navigation, and surveillance applications     

Radar target identification of aircraft using polarization-diversefeatures

The characteristics and target identification potential of a representation of the information from two polarization-diverse measurements of the radar backscatter of an unknown target are considered. The locus of these two polarization-diverse waveforms, termed the transient polarization response (TPR), has been shown to be closely related to the geometry of the scattering centers of the target. The polarization-related components of features derived from the TPR concur well with the shape and orientation of the major scattering centers distributed in the downrange profile of the object. This illustrates the intuitively appealing result that the polarization of the backscatter, as represented by the TPR and mapped onto the modified polarization chart, is determined by target geometry. It is shown that both polarization-related and amplitude-related features derived from the TPR are useful for target identification. By using distance measures that depend on various components, the elliptical parametrization information alone is sufficient to allow satisfactory target identification at SNRs of 0 dB and above. The significance of this result is that the absolute amplitudes of the received horizontally polarized and vertically polarized channels need not be known. However, if amplitude information is known, target identification percentages improve     

海杂波条件异方差特性分析与波动信息提取

由于低擦地角、高海况等易引起雷达海杂波序列的局部剧烈波动,传统的统计分布模型难以描述突然出现的具有冲激特性的强回波,因此,针对这一问题,将广义自回归条件异方差(Generalized Auto Regressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity,GARCH)模型引入海杂波建模中,通过 GARCH模型阶数步进搜索结合残差序列方差齐性检验,实现了海杂波数据的波动信息提取。经 X波段雷达实测数据验证,所提出的波动信息提取方法,可以很好地提取实测海杂波数据在局部区域或时间段内的波动信息,为特征检测方法设计提供有效的特征支撑。     

Measurements of L-band inland-water surface-clutter Doppler spectra

Although radar surface-clutter reflectivities from terrain are generally much greater than those from water, strong Bragg resonances at low but non-zero Doppler frequencies in backscatter from small inland bodies of water might potentially cause false alarms for moving target indicator (MTI) or other Doppler signal-processing techniques designed for target detection in ground clutter. To provide data for investigating this concern, measurements of L-band radar backscatter were recorded from the surface of a small inland freshwater reservoir in central Massachusetts. These measurements were of unusually high system stability and spectral purity so as to provide up to 80 dB of available spectral dynamic range. Strong Bragg spikes occurred in the clutter Doppler spectra from the reservoir at low (3 to 4 Hz) but non-zero Doppler frequencies. This strong Bragg resonance was persistent in time and space throughout the measurements. Spectral results are presented for all four combinations of linear polarization. Comparison with tree clutter spectral results indicates that, when an occasional water body comes under surveillance at vertical polarization in otherwise generally forested terrain, water clutter spectral density is expected to exceed surrounding-terrain tree clutter spectral densities in the Bragg-offset Doppler vicinity by large amounts     

New Clutter Rejection Waveforms for Long-Range Radar

A frequent compromise in the design of long-range search radars has to be made between the maximum unambiguous detection range and the achievable coherent clutter rejection performance. A new class of waveforms is introduced which offers the designer a previously unavailable flexibility in arriving at radar designs with improved clutter rejection without seriously affecting the maximum unambiguous search range. The key to these new waveforms is the recognition that a class of useful N-pulse, nonrecursive, moving target indicator (MTI) canceler designs exists which only requires the radar to transmit a total of N -1 (nonuniformly spaced) pulses.     

SPRI: simulator of polarimetric radar images

Simulator of polarimetric radar images (SPRI) consists of a suite of image processing programs for producing realistic millimeter-wave (MMW) radar images artificially on a workstation. The heart of the simulation approach is a polarimetric Rayleigh clutter simulator coupled to a clutter database. The simulator produces high resolution single-look polarimetric images. Hard targets can then be embedded into this clutter map, and the resultant image can be degraded in resolution, number of looks, polarization, etc. to match that which would be observed by a real sensor. Examples of simulated images, and comparisons of these simulations to actual images, are presented. The MMW Clutter Database is the most comprehensive to-date database of over 3500 Mueller matrices for many kinds of terrestrial clutter measured at 35 and 95 GHz, many of which are at incidence angles close to grazing. The database can be accessed via a World Wide Web flexible interface that enables data to be combined in new and unique ways specified by the user, and displayed in either tabular or graphical format. The structure and access procedure to the database are described     

Multiple moving target feature extraction for airborne HRR radar

This study considers the clutter suppression and feature extraction of multiple moving targets for airborne high range resolution (HRR) phased array radar. To avoid the range migration problems that occur in the HRR radar data, we divide each HRR profile into nonoverlapping low range resolution segments. No information is lost due to the division and hence no loss of resolution occurs. We show how to use a vector auto-regressive filtering technique to suppress the clutter. Then a relaxation-based parameter estimation algorithm is presented for multiple moving target feature extraction. Numerical results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm     

大入射余角实测高分辨 海杂波数据幅度统计特性

基于Ku波段高分辨大入射余角(擦地角)海杂波数据,采用瑞利分布、韦布尔分布、对数正态分布、K分布和KK分布进行仿真,并与实测数据对比,分析了这些分布方式的拟合效果。结果表明,海杂波的幅度在大入射余角情况下基本还是逼近瑞利分布的,海杂波在某些距离单元上的幅度分布曲线尾部偏离瑞利分布,此时K和KK分布可在拖尾处达到更好的拟合效果。     

A multiresolution approach to discrimination in SAR imagery

We develop and test a new algorithm for discriminating man-made objects from natural clutter in synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) imagery. This algorithm exploits characteristic variations in speckle pattern as image resolution is varied from course to fine. We model these variations as an autoregression in scale, and then use the autoregressive model to define a multiresolution log-likelihood ratio discriminant. We incorporate this discriminant into the existing Lincoln Laboratory SAR system for automatic target recognition (ATR), and test the augmented system by applying it to millimeter-wave SAR imagery having 0.3 m resolution and representing 56 square kilometers of terrain. At a probability of detection of 0.95, the addition of the multiresolution discriminant reduces the number of natural-clutter false alarms by a factor of six.     

Vector subspace detection in compound-Gaussian clutter. Part II: performance analysis

For pt. I see ibid., vol. 38, no. 4, p. 1295 (2002). In this second part we deal with the problem of detecting subspace random signals against correlated non-Gaussian clutter modeled by the compound-Gaussian distribution. In the first part of the paper, we derived the optimum Neyman-Pearson (NP) detector, the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT), and a constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) detector; we also provided some interesting interpretations of them. In this second part, these detectors are tested against both simulated data and measured high resolution sea clutter data to investigate the dependence of their performance on the various clutter and signal parameters. Numerical examples concern a space-time adaptive processing (STAP) scenario and a ground-based surveillance radar system scenario.     

Reduced-rank STAP for high PRF radar

Due to the range ambiguity of high pulse-repetition frequency (HPRF) radars, echoes from far-range fold over near-range returns. This effect may cause low Doppler targets to compete with near-range strong clutter. Another consequence of the range ambiguity is that the sample support for estimating the array covariance matrix is reduced, leading to degraded performance. It is shown that space-time adaptive processing (STAP) techniques are required to reject the clutter in HPRF radar. Four STAP methods are studied in the context of the HPRF radar problem: low rank approximation sample matrix inversion (SMI), diagonally loaded SMI, eigencanceler, and element-space post-Doppler. These three methods are evaluated in typical HPRF radar scenarios and for various training conditions, including when the target is present in the training data     

High resolution radar clutter statistics

The generalized compound probability density function (GC-pdf) is presented for modeling high resolution radar clutter. In particular, the model is used to describe deviation of the speckle component from the Rayleigh to Weibull or other pdfs with longer tails. The GC-pdf is formed using the generalized gamma (GΓ) pdf to describe both the speckle and the modulation component of the radar clutter. The proposed model is analyzed and thermal noise is incorporated into it. The validation of the GC-pdf with real data is carried out employing the statistical moments as well as goodness-of-fit tests. A large variety of experimental data is used for this purpose. The GC-pdf outperforms the K-pdf in modeling high resolution radar clutter and reveals its structural characteristics     

Time-frequency method for detecting an accelerating target in sea clutter

The authors design a time-frequency (TF) method for use in high-frequency surface-wave radar (HFSWR) for detecting a small accelerating target in sea clutter. The clutter is modelled by pseudo targets moving with Bragg velocity towards and away from the radar. The design is based on the Wigner distribution (WD) defined by Chan (type-III WD, in our terminology) rather than the WD defined by Claasen and Mecklenbrauker (1980) (2times type-I WD, in our terminology). Like the type-I WD, the type-III WD also concentrates a chirp signal onto a straight line in the TF plane. The type-III WD has the following advantages: 1) Its range of unambiguously measurable frequencies (RUMF) is [-pi,pi] rad/s, whereas for the type-I WD the RUMF is [-pi/2,pi/2] rad/s. 2) It allows a target separated from the clutter by pi rad/s to be detected, whereas the type-I WD coalesces such a target with the clutter and thereby mask it. An ambiguity function (AF) was defined corresponding to the type-III WD and use it to derive a smoothed type-III WD that mitigates the clutter. The smoothed type-III WD method is applied to real radar data and shown to be superior to the conventional Fourier transform method. The advantages of the type-III WD over the type-I WD are also demonstrated. The design principles laid out in the paper can also be used to develop a TF method for use in air traffic control radar (ATCR) for detecting an accelerating target in land clutter     

一种基于FPGA的海杂波产生器设计

海杂波是反舰导弹末制导雷达回波的主要背景噪声,在末制导雷达模拟器的设计中,海杂波产生器是一个重要组成部分。在研究海杂波噪声概率分布密度的基础上,给出了一种基于FPGA技术的海杂波产生器的设计方案,并利用Altera公司的cyclone II系列芯片和QuartusII开发软件对设计进行了仿真验证。采用FPGA技术可以方便地对设计方案、海杂波的分布形式、数据量大小进行修改。仿真结果表明,该设计能够产生符合要求的海杂波信号,并且具有结构简单、集成度高、易于修改等特点。     

Remote data sensing using SAR and harmonic reradiators

In sensor networks distributed over large areas, communication by means of active transmitters on sensor nodes is inherently energy expensive and poses a significant bottleneck to achieve a long battery life. We propose modulated reradiation of radar illumination as a means to transmit information from a group of sensors to an airborne radar. This puts the communications energy burden on the radar transmitter rather than on the sensor nodes, thus increasing their battery lifetimes. To distinguish the sensor return from the clutter return, the modulation on the sensors is done by switching a nonlinear load on the sensor antenna and processing the harmonic reradiation. We present techniques to transmit information from the sensors, which use stripmap mode synthetic aperture radar (SAR) ideas to decode the information and to simultaneously obtain a geographic map of the sensor locations.     

Effects of polarization and resolution on SAR ATR

Lincoln Laboratory is investigating the detection and classification of stationary ground targets using high resolution, fully polarimetric, synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. A study is summarized in which data collected by the Lincoln Laboratory 33 GHz SAR were used to perform a comprehensive comparison of automatic target recognition (ATR) performance for several polarization/resolution combinations. The Lincoln Laboratory baseline ATR algorithm suite was used, and was optimized for each polarization/resolution case. Both the HH polarization alone and the optimal combination of HH, HV, and VV were evaluated; the resolutions evaluated were 1 ft/spl times/1 ft and 1 m/spl times/1 m. The data set used for this study contained approximately 74 km/sup 2/ of clutter (56 km/sup 2/ of mixed clutter plus 18 km/sup 2/ of highly cultural clutter) and 136 tactical target images (divided equally between tanks and howitzers).