Rapid Simulation of Temporal-Spatial Correlated 3D Sea Clutter

Abstract

Due to the difficulties in actual measurement of sea clutter and uncertainties of experimental data, the electromagnetic (EM) scattering model becomes a better alternative means to acquire the sea clutter. However, the EM scattering model still faces the problems of huge memory consumption and low-computational efficiency when dealing with the large size of sea surface or the long time case. Thus, this paper presents a statistical model to simulate the temporal-spatial correlated three-dimensional (3D) sea clutter, which is based on the statistical properties obtained from the EM scattering model, such as probability density function and correlation function. The comparisons show that the texture feature, autocorrelation function, and PDF of the sea clutter simulated by the statistical model have a good agreement with the results given by the EM model. Furthermore, the statistical model is with high efficiency and can be used to simulate the large scene or long time temporal-spatial correlated 3D sea clutter.