Modelling Airborne L-band Radar Sea and Coastal Land Clutter
Abstract
The limiting factor affecting the performance of most airborne radar systems in detecting targets on or near wind-swept surface of the sea is return echoes from sea surface known as sea clutter. This report addresses the clutter returns from a maritime environment for airborne L-band VV-polarised radar. Modelling of radar sea return is discussed with consideration to propagation under standard atmospheric conditions. A composite sea clutter model has been developed, which is based upon the concept of a two-scale sea surface model with directional sea spectrum and simple facet specular return at near-normal incidence. Several sea clutter models have been collated with data collected by the Naval Research Laboratory four-frequency radar system under varying sea conditions, and polarimetric synthetic aperture radar images of the North-West of Australia. The results of the comparison have shown that the composite sea clutter model better predicts the backscattering coefficient, theta, of sea surface returns for varying sea conditions, radar look directions, and grazing angles. In addition, a radar backscattering model for bare soil showed good agreement between modelling results and POLSAR data for returns from coastal saline flat surfaces surrounding the North-West coastal areas.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 2000
- Accession Number
- ADA381132
Entities
People
- Poh L. Choong