Physics-based sea clutter model for improved detection of low radar cross-section targets

This paper studies the challenging problem of detecting a low radar cross-section target in heavy sea clutter by proposing a physics-based sea clutter generation model. The model includes a process that generates random dynamic sea clutter based on the governing physics of water gravity and capillary waves and a finite-difference time-domain electromagnetics simulations process based on Maxwells equations propagating the radar signal. A subspace clutter suppression detector is considered to remove dominant clutter eigenmodes. The improved detection performance over matched filtering is demonstrated using sea clutter model simulations.