Near-Field Analysis of Helicopter Rotating Blades Modulation Interference

A near-field analysis is carried out to obtain the level of modulation interference due to rotating blades in a helicopter-borne pulse Doppler radar system. The interference power spectra are calculated for different values of antenna depression angle and helicopter (radar) speed at a constant helicopter altitude of 300 m. Numerical results for the case of 1 kW radiated power show that blade interference level is about 5 to 8 dBW/Hz less than that of the direct ground clutter in the clutter region. It extends, however, into the clutter-free region which may cause false alarms and degradation of the radar performance.     

Radio Interference in Helicopter-Borne Pulse Doppler Radars

Radio interference generated in a helicopter-borne pulse Doppler radar system due to rotating blades is analyzed for the case that blades are located in the far field region of the radar antenna. A first-order estimate of the blade interference power spectrum is obtained as a function of antenna depression angle and radar (helicopter) altitude and speed. Numerical calculations show that blade interference is very weak compared with the direct ground clutter. It extends, however, into the clutter-free region which causes false alarms and degrades the radar performance.     

Correspondence - Optimum Radar Signal for Detection in Clutter

It is shown that in order to maximize the detectability of a radar target in clutter whose Doppler is unknown and is uniformly distributed over the Doppler bandwidth a simple CW or narrowband signal is optimal. The optimality criterion is the average deflection coefficient, with the averaging being over target Doppler frequency. Most remarkably the result does not depend on the clutter spectrum but holds for any distribution of clutter energy with frequency.     

Multipath and ground clutter analysis for a UWB noise radar

An ultrawideband (UWB) random-noise radar operating in the 1-2 GHz frequency band has been developed and field-tested up to a 200 m range at the Environmental Remote Sensing Laboratory (ERSL) of the University of Nebraska. A unique heterodyne correlation technique based on a delayed transmitted waveform using a photonic delay line has been used to inject coherence within this system. The performance of this radar in the presence of ground reflections is investigated analytically and experimentally, and the mitigating effects of UWB waveform on multipath-induced interference are analyzed. In addition, the ground clutter statistics, in a look-down mode, are theoretically established and experimentally verified. The performance of this radar in detecting clutter embedded targets with small radar cross section (RCS) is also experimentally examined.     

Angle/Doppler estimation in heavy-tailed clutter backgrounds

This work describes new methods on the modeling of the amplitude statistics of airborne radar clutter by means of alpha-stable distributions. We develop joint target angle and Doppler, maximum likelihood-based estimation techniques from radar measurements retrieved in the presence of impulsive uncorrelated noise modeled as an alpha-stable random process. We derive the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for the additive Cauchy interference scenario to assess the best case estimation accuracy which can be achieved. In addition, we introduce a new joint spatial- and Doppler-frequency high-resolution estimation technique based on the fractional lower order statistics of the measurements of a radar array. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods can be of interest in the study of space-time adaptive processing (STAP) for airborne pulse Doppler radar arrays operating in impulsive interference environments     

A Generalized Clutter Computation Procedure for Airborne Pulse Doppler Radars

A general procedure for analyzing ground clutter effects in airborne pulse Doppler radars is described. The quantity computed is the expected clutter power at the output of any specified range gate/ Doppler filter processing cell. The procedure has been computerized and is quite general with respect to antenna gain pattern, clutter cross section variation, PRF, pulse and range gate shapes, and the various receiver processing functions. It is applicable only to distributed ground clutter and linear processing, and excludes the dynamic effects of continuous antenna scanning. To exemplify the use of the procedure, two studies conducted for a postulated high PRF radar are described, and the results are presented.     

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     

MTI Optimization in a Multiple-Clutter Environment

A means of optimizing a moving target indicator (MTI) filter for rejecting several types of clutter, which are generated by different mechanisms such as by rain or the ground, is formulated. lt is found that the optimal performance of such a filter depends on the spectral density functions, average radar cross sections, and the relative mean Doppler frequencies of each type of clutter. lt is shown that the optimal improvement factor of such a filter is bounded by the weighted average (weighted in accordance with the radar cross sections of the clutter types) of the improvement factor for the individual clutter type. lt is also shown that the improvement factor of such a filter is a function of the relative mean Doppler frequency f0 between the clutter types. As f0 increases, the performance of the MTI system degrades. The worst improvement factor occurs when f0 is equal to half of the radar pulse-repetition frequency (PRF).     

Doppler Processor Rejection of Range Ambiguous Clutter

Doppler processors are used in radar to separate target returns from clutter. When the clutter is at a range farther than the unambiguous range of the radar, the ability to reject the clutter is degraded. In this article the degradation is analyzed for an N-pulse batch processor with Dolph weighting, and the results show how degradation varies with design sidelobe level.     

基于3DT的空时自适应单脉冲参数估计算法

空时自适应处理(STAP)是机载预警雷达抑制杂波和干扰的一项关键技术,而多普勒三通道联合自适应处理(3DT)是适合工程实现的降维(RD)STAP方法。STAP目标检测后还需进一步估计目标的角度参数,因此将自适应单脉冲(AM)技术引入3DT,提出了一种高精度联合估计目标速度与方位空间角的空时自适应单脉冲算法。理论分析与仿真实验结果表明,当目标多普勒频率偏离检测多普勒单元中心频率时,该算法能同时减少目标多普勒跨越损失和空时导引矢量失配损失,进而提高输出信杂噪比(SCNR),改善目标测角精度。     

Clutter rejection and transmitter-receiver requirements in anairborne radar

Ground clutter rejection requirements imposed on the exciter transmitter-receiver units of multirole airborne radar are examined. Methods are given to determine the characteristics of the units, such as noise, spurious spectral lines level, and analog-to-digital converter (ADC) dynamics, in both high- and medium-pulse-repetition-frequency modes of operation. It is shown that the spectral noise does not depend on either the wave form or the Doppler bandwidth. The reference oscillator spectral noise must be about -155 dB_c/Hz. The level of spurious lines generally depends only on the duty cycle, and the requirement is -80 dB_c for each line. ADC requires 12 to 14 b. The high-frequency mode is the most promising for detecting targets with very low radar cross sections in head-on configuration (free clutter domain)     

Mm wavelengths complex Doppler analysis using dark field illumination

Experimental results that indicate that at least two fundamental modes of Doppler generation are present when a rotating steel cylinder is broadside illuminated by radar. Improvised bistatic measurements at 77GHz are discussed and second order Doppler effects studied. Complex Doppler returns, consisting of two or more Doppler contributions, are decomposed and studied using empirical methods. In particular, ground illumination techniques are used to study Doppler in the shadow region of a cylinder of circumference 81 wavelengths. It is concluded that the complex Doppler response from the spinning cylinder consists of both direct (first order) and delayed (second order) Doppler components. Further measurements are proposed to study the delayed Doppler effect further.     

Robust space-time adaptive processing for airborne radar in nonhomogeneous clutter environments

Space-time adaptive processing (STAP) holds tremendous potential for the new generation airborne surveillance radar, in which the phased array antennas and pulse Doppler processing mode are adopted. A new STAP approach using the multiple-beam and multiple Doppler channels is presented here for airborne phased array radar. The approach with space-time multiple-beam (STMB) architecture is robust to array errors and has very low system degrees of freedom (DOFs). Hence, it has low sample support requirement and it is very suitable for the practical planar phased array radar under nonhomogeneous clutter environments. Meanwhile, a new nonhomogeneous detector (NHD) based on the correlation dimension (CD) is also proposed here, which is used as an effective method to screen tracing data prior to detection processing. It can further improve the performance of the STAP approach in the severely nonhomogeneous clutter environments. Therefore, a scheme that incorporates the correlation dimension nonhomogeneity detector (CD-NHD) with the STMB is recommended, which we term CD-NHD-STMB. The experimental simulation results indicate that: 1) the STMB processor is robust to array element error and has high performance under nonhomogeneous clutter environments; 2) the CD-NHD is also effective on the nonhomogeneous clutter. As a result, the CD-NHD-STMB scheme is robust to array element error and nonhomogeneous clutter, and therefore available for airborne phased array radar applications.     

Radar detection in clutter

Clutter is defined as any unwanted radar return. The presence of clutter in a range/Doppler cell complicates the detection of a target return signal in that cell. In order to quantify the effect of clutter on the probability of detection, we must first specify sets of models suitable for representing the clutter and target. The simplest and most common model for clutter is based on the gamma density. We include two additional models, the NCG and NCGG clutter models for low grazing angles. They are motivated by physical arguments, the latter of which can accommodate the well-known phenomenon of speckle. Using one of these models for clutter together with one of several models for targets, we determine, in a range/Doppler cell, expressions for probabilities of detection of a target in the presence of clutter. It is important to control the probability of false alarms. The presence of clutter in a cell necessitates an increase in the detection threshold setting in order to control false alarms, thus lowering the probability of detection. If the clutter level is unknown, then we need to take measurements of the clutter and use it to adjust the threshold. The more clutter samples we take, the better the estimate of the clutter level and the less is the resulting detection loss. Using the expressions for the probability of detection in clutter, we can quantify the detection loss for a pair of commonly used constant false-alarm rate (CFAR) techniques and investigate how the loss varies with different parameter values, especially with regard to the number of clutter samples taken to estimate the clutter level.     

FM/AM Noise Test Set for a Pulsed Doppler Radar

A new test method to measure the amplitude noise and phase noise in both CW and pulsed CW signals of a Ku-band pulsed Doppler radar is described. These noises are measured in a simulated environment of radar operation; thus the test results may give direct information to determine radar subclutter visibility. In comparison with the conventional noise test method, this new method not only gives more meaningful results but also can obtain results much faster in testing. Actual test system design is described by block diagrams and theoretical analysis. A method to determine approximate frequency jitter in a transmitter signal is also described.     

Effect of earth?s rotation and range foldover on space-based radar performance

Space-based radar (SBR) by virtue of its motion generates a Doppler frequency component to the clutter return from any point on the Earth as a function of the SBR-Earth geometry. The effect of the rotation of the Earth around its own axis also adds an additional component to this Doppler frequency. The overall effect of the rotation of the Earth on the Doppler turns out to be two correction factors in terms of a crab angle affecting the azimuth angle, and a crab magnitude scaling the Doppler magnitude of the clutter patch. Interestingly, both these quantities depend only on the SBR orbit inclination and its latitude and not on the location of the clutter patch of interest. Further, the crab angle has maximum effect for an SBR on a polar orbit that is above the equator. The crab magnitude, on the other hand, peaks for an SBR on an equatorial orbit. Together with the range foldover phenomenon, their overall effect is to generate Doppler spread/splitting resulting in wider clutter notches that degrade the clutter nulling performance of adaptive processing techniques. A detailed performance analysis and methods to minimize these effects are discussed here     

Comparison between monostatic and bistatic antenna configurationsfor STAP

The unique characteristics of bistatic radar operation on the performance of airborne/spaceborne moving target indicator (MTI) radars that use space-time adaptive processing (STAP) are discussed. It has been shown that monostatic STAP radar has the following properties. 1) For a horizontal flight path and a planar Earth the curves of constant clutter Doppler (isodops) are hyperbolas. 2) For a sidelooking antenna geometry the clutter Doppler is range independent. 3) Clutter trajectories in the cosφ-F plane (F=normalized Doppler) are in general ellipses (or straight lines for a sidelooking array). We demonstrate that these well-known properties are distorted by the displacement between transmitter and receiver in a bistatic configuration. It is shown that even for the sidelooking array geometry the clutter Doppler is range-dependent which requires adaptation of the STAP processor for each individual range gate. Conclusions for the design of STAP processors are drawn     

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     

Radar Signature of a Helicopter Illuminated by a Long LFM Signal

Helicopters exhibit a very particular Doppler radar signature caused by the movement of rotor blades. This signature can easily be derived using a short-time approximation: the blades are assumed to be static during each pulse. In wideband linear frequency modulated (LFM) radars, however, this assumption cannot be made. The work presented here describes the echo of rotary blades illuminated by LFM radars without the short-time assumption and provides useful information for detection and recognition purposes.