MATLAB Implementation of Scan-to-Scan Discriminator for the Detection of Marine Targets

For an operational radar, backscatter of the transmitted signal by the elements of the sea surface often places severe limits on the detect ability of returns from ships, missiles, navigation buoys, and other targets sharing the radar resolution cell with the sea surface. These interfering signals are commonly referred to as sea clutter, or sea echo. Maritime surveillance radar experiences serious limitations imposed on their performance by unwanted sea clutter. In the marine environment, sea clutter might occur at a random position in one scan but not in the next or subsequent scans. In contrast, targets will appear from scan to scan with essentially the same amplitude. The scan-to-scan discriminator eliminates “spiky” clutter by using one of the 3 approaches. They are: 1. Fixed Threshold. 2. Cell Averaging Constant False Alarm Rate (CACFAR). 3. Clutter Map. The output of the scan-to-scan discriminator is then used to tag the speed of small marine targets and gating approach is used to tag the speed of large marine targets. The proposed architectures have been designed using MATLAB R2007b.