Comparison of the Detection Performance of an FMCW Coastal Surveillance Radar for V and H Polarizations

The present work supports the use of V-polarization instead of H-polarization under CFAR detection in FMCW coastal surveillance radars due to its statistical advantage. The sea clutter reflectivity, sigma⁰ , is about 3-5 dB less for H-polarization than for V-polarization. However, the sea clutter echoes are spikier for H-polarization than V-polarization for a high resolution radar. It has been suggested that for a high resolution radar V-polarization is to be preferred over H-polarization for a fixed threshold detection below a critical radar height (Watts, 1996). The new numerical results for the detection performance of an FMCW radar with CFAR detection supporting the above argument will be given in the following sections.