Radar sea clutter suppression and target detection with α-β-γ filter

Abstract

Sea clutter refers to the radar returns from a patch of ocean surface. When a radar detects targets on or above the sea surface, it has to overcome the interference from sea echo itself. Sea clutter presents obviously non-Gaussian, non-stationary for many diverse factors, such as radar polarization mode, working frequency, antenna visual angle, sea state and wind direction, which limit the detection capability of radar. In this paper, we elaborate the production mechanism of sea clutter in detail and propose a new alpha-beta-gamma filter to suppress sea clutter and detect targets. In addition, the performance analysis and parameter choosing standard are given and the algorithm is proved to be effective with real data.