Atmospheric Duct Estimation Using Radar Sea Clutter Returns by the Adjoint Method with Regularization Technique

Abstract

Abstract This paper focuses on retrieving the atmospheric duct structure from radar sea clutter returns by the adjoint approach with the regularization technique. The adjoint is derived from the split-step Fourier parabolic equation method, and the regularization term is constructed by the background refractivity field. To ensure successful implementations of the regularization, the L-curve criterion is used to find the optimal regularization parameter. The feasibility of the proposed method is validated by the numerical simulations of different noise-level clutter returns, as well as a real clutter profile measured by the S-Band Space Range Radar located in Wallops Island. In the process of inversions, the refractivity profile is first obtained by genetic algorithm, and then it is used as the background field for the adjoint method. The retrieved results indicate that, with an appropriate regularization parameter, the structure of the background refractivity profile can be improved by the proposed method.