A Novel Approach to Evaluate Sea Clutter and Detection of a Supersonic Sea Skimming Target by FMCW Radar Ranging in High Velocity Platform

Radar ranging is an important aspect in detecting target in the presence of sea clutter. Problem becomes more challenging when the target to be detected is supersonic in nature. For RF proximity sensor in naval application such ranging becomes more difficult as the platform has a velocity in terminal phase, which is often in the sonic range. So (response) latent time should be in sub-milliseconds asking for a very simple yet effective signal processing. Presence of sea clutter hides the actual target under the noise floor. Increasing number of FFT points or ADC bit resolution used for spectrum analysis is a solution but it asks for increasing resources which cannot be fitted in a very limited size and power resources available in the sensor. The size and environmental force restriction poses design in terms of miniaturized radar g-hardening. The process of g-hardening to cater environmental forces is a commendable task as it also influences RF performance. This paper presents a novel approach to numerically evaluate the sea clutter in connection with the Doppler scenario for both sensor platform and supersonic target. Its influences on spectral form are also analyzed with different parameters as variable. Target detection and its suitable conditioning are also taken into account.