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     

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。     

Space-time adaptive radar performance in heterogeneous clutter

Traditional analysis of space-time adaptive radar generally assumes the ideal condition of statistically independent and identically distributed (IID) secondary data. To the contrary, measured data suggests realistic clutter environments appear heterogeneous and so the secondary data is no longer IID. Heterogeneity leads to mismatch between actual and estimated covariance matrices, thereby magnifying the loss between the adaptive implementation and optimum condition. Concerns regarding the impact of clutter heterogeneity on space-time adaptive processing (STAP) warrant further study. To this end, we propose space-time models of amplitude and spectral clutter heterogeneity, with operational airborne radar in mind, and then characterize expected STAP performance loss under such heterogeneous scenarios. Simulation results reveal loss in signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) ranging between a few tenths of a decibel to greater than 16 dB for specific cases     

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.     

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     

扫描模式航管监视雷达风电场杂波检测与抑制

近年来,全球风力发电装机容量呈指数增长。研究表明,风轮机对其附近的航管(ATC)监视雷达会产生严重影响。风轮机杂波的有效检测及抑制,对于保证空中交通安全具有重要意义。首先提出了基于回波谱宽特征的航管监视雷达的风轮机杂波检测方法。针对扫描模式下航管监视雷达频谱分辨率较低的问题,将基于自回归(AR)模型的超分辨率方法和质量中心的概念应用于雷达回波的快速谱宽和谱中心估计算法中,提高谱宽估计的精度。其次针对扫描模式下的风轮机回波数据不是一个完整周期数据的问题,基于缺省数据幅度和相位估计(GAPES)算法实现了扫描模式下风轮机雷达回波缺省数据的估计,而后利用风轮机杂波的周期性抑制风轮机杂波。该算法实现了风轮机杂波的有效检测和抑制,并且其不受限于风轮机与飞机目标在同一个距离单元的情况。仿真结果验证了所提方法的有效性。     

Analysis of array errors and a short-time processor in airbornephased array radars

Array errors are inherent in a realistic phased array radar system. The influence of array errors on the clutter degrees of freedom and the clutter subspace in an airborne phased array radar is analyzed. Based on the presented theoretic results, a method of short-time processing followed by coherent integration is proposed for clutter suppression in airborne phased array radars. It can approximate the two-dimensional optimal processor well even in the presence of array errors, clutter fluctuations and aircraft drift, with a considerable saving in computations     

基于稀疏重建的MIMO-OTH雷达多模杂波抑制算法

针对由多模传播引起的多普勒扩展杂波(SDC)严重影响天波超视距雷达(OTHR)对慢速船舰目标的检测这一问题,在基于多输入多输出体制的新一代天波超视距(MIMO-OTH)雷达系统下,利用空域信息抑制多模SDC。传统处理方法需要目标角度先验信息,而在实际中,该信息往往很难获得。为此,提出一种新的基于稀疏重建的多模杂波抑制算法。该算法将二维的稀疏角度搜索转变为一维的角度搜索,使运算量大大降低,且估计出的收发角(DOA-DOD)自动配对,同时可获得各个传播路径下信号的时间多普勒信息,达到了理想的MIMO-OTH雷达多模杂波抑制效果。仿真结果证明了所提算法的有效性。     

Target detection trials with a millimeter wave radar system

Unobstructed, large RCS targets, similar radar targets surrounded by moving foliage, and small targets in severe clutter have been used as test cases for two pre-processing algorithms and several threshold levels in an experimental millimeter wave radar system. The rather conventional "six-out-of-eight" pulse radar selection method with binary output has been compared to an algorithm that accepts a target if the pre-defined trigger level is crossed by the average of the eight consecutive pulses. In this case, however, the output is an analog value corresponding to the relative average video amplitude. In terms of plotted video, this process seems to give a slightly better combination of false alarm rate and detection probability. Large targets are easier to detect from foliage clutter with the conventional method.     

基于先验知识及其定量评估的自适应杂波抑制研究

 为了改善训练样本数受限的非均匀杂波环境中的系统检测性能,研究了基于先验知识及其定量评估的自适应杂波抑制算法。提出了使用经真实杂波信息白化后的先验杂波协方差矩阵与单位矩阵之差的谱范数,来定量评估杂波先验知识的准确程度,并给出了真实杂波协方差矩阵未知时的矩阵谱范数估计方法。结合先验知识定量评估结果,获得了具有先验知识约束时的杂波协方差矩阵最大似然估计方法。分别基于多脉冲相参雷达以及空时自适应雷达进行了杂波建模,在此基础之上分析了算法性能。仿真结果证实了该算法优于使用样本协方差矩阵及先验杂波信息形成杂波抑制权值的性能。     

基于嵌入式仿真的雷达训练系统设计

介绍了嵌入式仿真技术及其发展,将嵌入式仿真与雷达模拟训练相结合,构成了能够嵌入到机械扫描雷达实装的模拟训练系统。描述了对嵌入式仿真训练系统的结构组成以及部分模块的功能,研究了模拟雷达视频回波数据的方法和模型,包括目标回波、地物杂波、海杂波、气象杂波、有源干扰和接收机内部噪声,利用数学模型计算回波的强度、方位、距离等特性,调制实际录取的回波数据,生成与态势设置参数相应的模拟回波数据,能够对信号处理操作和抗干扰操作做出响应。通过对视频回波进行仿真,由终端显示画面可知模拟的回波数据具有较高的逼真度,经测试模拟视频回波能够被雷达显控终端识别。     

机载MIMO雷达空时自适应杂波对消器

针对机载多输入多输出(MIMO)雷达杂波分布呈现空时耦合特性,提出一种空时自适应杂波对消器.利用机载MIMO雷达的脉冲回波数据,构造杂波对消器的系数矩阵.通过空时自适应杂波对消器的预处理,可以有效地抑制杂波,并通过与常规空时处理算法的级联,最终可以有效提高动目标的检测性能.实现了由传统地基雷达杂波对消器向机载运动平台的推广.仿真结果表明,这种自适应杂波对消器不仅适用于正侧视雷达,对于非正侧视雷达也同样适用.     

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.     

箔条云对飞机隐身特性的影响分析与计算

建立了箔条云对飞机隐身特性的影响分析与计算方法。考虑的对抗情况是突防方用一架飞机播撒箔条偶极子云,作战飞机以该箔条云带为掩护进行突防或调动。通过算例计算了箔条干扰及目标 RCS对飞行器隐身性能的影响。结论是:在每千米突防路径上抛撒6000根数量的箔条就可以极大地提高飞行器的隐身能力,使得 RCS小于100m2 的目标难于被一般雷达探测到。即使雷达对于箔条杂波中可见度有30d B的改善,在箔条干扰下对目标的检测性能仍然不如在杂波和噪声条件下。应当指出,虽然计算结果表明箔条具有很好的干扰效果,但其应用应考虑到战场战术环境、天气条件等外界因素的限制和影响。     

Modified Difference Change Detector for Small Targets in SAR Imagery

One of the most straightforward techniques for detecting changes in an image involves forming the difference between a test image and a reference image. Unfortunately, such a technique can give rise to a large number of false alarms due to the statistical variability of the underlying pixel values, as has been well established within the radar community over the years. One method for dealing with this large number of false alarms involves forming the ratio, rather than the difference, of two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images. We introduce a modified version of the standard differencing technique to overcome problems associated with pixel value variability. The new (modified) differencing approach utilizes assumptions about the statistics of the image background and the object being sought (target) to reduce the number of false alarms due to highly variable background (clutter) regions, and it includes the standard ratio test as a special case. In fact, we find that the modified difference approach can also be viewed as a modified version of the ratio test with a threshold that varies as a function of the background clutter radar cross section (RCS). We also present an abridged, albeit suboptimal, version of this approach that eliminates assumptions regarding the target's probability distribution, and we analyze both of the approaches. We then compare these results with those obtained with a standard ratio test, and illustrate how the modified difference test reduces to the ratio test under certain operating conditions. The abridged version of the modified approach is applied to high resolution synthetic aperture radar imagery and compared with results obtained with the classical differencing technique, and following this, the modified difference technique is compared with the standard ratio test. Results suggest that under appropriate conditions the abridged, modified technique can successfully detect changes without the need for any image segmentation.     

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).     

Flower classification by bats: radar comparisons

In recent years, with the development of high-range resolution radars, the desire to identify targets under all weather and clutter conditions has become of great importance. This is an activity carried out with great success by echo-locating mammals such as nectar feeding bats that are able to detect and select flowers of bat-pollinated plants, even in a dense clutter environment. Herein, data consisting of acoustically-generated high-range resolution profiles of four bat-pollinated flower heads are analysed. Multi-perspective classification performance is assessed and compared with the radar case. There are close parallels that suggest lessons can be learnt from nature.     

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     

Millimeter wave radar with clutter measurements

A portable millimeter wave test radar system, also suitable for battery operation, gives interesting possibilities for clutter recordings at hard-to-reach sites. The designed system covers all common radar frequencies from the Ka- to V-bands and enables spatial detection of targets or clutter elements within an adjustable time gate, whereby spatial clutter profiles of rain can be analyzed. The construction allows full operation with non-scanning antennas as well. This is advantageous when measuring temporal RCS variations of selected targets or surface clutter from snow dunes.     

MMW radar scattering statistics of terrain at near grazingincidence

The statistical behavior of clutter observed near grazing incidence and at 95 GHz is investigated for the specific cases of bare ground, snow cover, and for a heterogeneous scene. The bare ground constitutes a homogeneous target under homogeneous conditions and the magnitude of the amplitude is Rayleigh distributed. While the snow cover is a homogeneous target, the conditions under which it was observed are heterogeneous, and the Bayes rule is employed to describe its clutter distribution. The Bayes rule integrates variations due to signal fading with the underlying variations in the backscattering coefficient associated with the heterogeneity. The heterogeneous scene is also successfully described with the Bayes rule