Statistics of radar sea spikes at moderate angles of incidence

The distribution functions for radar backscatter from the sea are important for various detection problems. Sea spikes affect these distributions, and the distributions of the spikes themselves are important. The authors studied distributions from Ka-band radar signals measured in the SAXON experiment. Distributions are bilinear on Weibull paper when modulation due to underlying waves is present, but also when the modulation is removed. The low-energy part of the CDF for power is exponential, but the tail extends to higher signal levels than for exponential. The fact that both modulation and sea spikes extend the distribution makes separation of the effects difficult