A Two-stage Detector for First-order Sea Clutter in HF Surface Wave Radar

Abstract

The detection capabilities in vertical polarized, High-frequency SurfaceWave Radar (HFSWR) are limited by the clutter spikes in first-order sea clutter. The energy, position, and Doppler frequency of first-order sea clutter depend on the sea states, which are non-homogeneous – because of that, using a fixed expression to eliminate sea clutter gives limited results. In this paper, the authors proposed a new adaptive method using a two-stage detector based on the Order Statistic Constant False Alarm Rate (OS-CFAR) principle. The approach shows the capability to eliminate heterogeneous clutter and detect targets in the vicinities of sea clutter in the Range – Doppler map.