The modelling and exploitation of spatial correlation in spiky sea clutter

A physically based sea clutter model is used to calculate the statistics of sea clutter. The mean radar cross section (RCS) is found to match experimental results and the second moment is found to be consistent with the resolution dependence of the clutter shape parameter. The correlation structure predicted by the model is found, on average, to be consistent with real data, but the latter also shows significant transient coherence. This property may be exploited for sea spike suppression and target detection improvement