Identification and analysis of sea radar clutter spikes

In recent times, considerable advances have been made on analysing low grazing angle radar sea clutter in the gigahertz frequency range. In this work, a set of coherent and polarimetric sea clutter data is analysed focusing on the statistical and spectral properties of the spikes, whatever is the physical phenomenon that generates them. Using three sea spike defining parameters, the spike amplitude, the minimum spike width and the minimum interval between spikes, it is possible to identify the spiking events from the background. This work shows a sample of results from a statistical and spectral analysis of a set of sea spikes selected from the radar returns, focusing on their Doppler properties, the spike duration and the temporal interval between spikes.