Sea & Land Clutter Statistical Analysis & Modeling

The modeling of the clutter echoes is a central issue for the design and performance evaluation of radar systems. Main goal of this lecture is to describe the state-of-the-art approaches to the modeling and understanding of land and sea clutter echoes and their implications on performance prediction and signal processors design.
The lecture first introduces radar sea and ground clutter phenomena, measurements and measurement limitations, at high and low resolution, high and low grazing angles with particular attention to classical model for RCS prediction. Most part of the lecture will be dedicated to modern statistical and spectral models for high resolution sea and ground clutter and to the methods of experimental validation using recorded data sets. Some comparison between monostatic and bistatic sea clutter data will be provided together with some results on non-stationarity analysis of the high resolution sea clutter.