Site-specific simulation of clutter-limited radar systems

This paper presents a new simulator for predicting the performance of low-angle radars involving the study of the limiting land/sea clutter signal in the receiver. Physical optics (PO) in conjunction with digitized terrain elevation data (DTED) allow the environment to be characterised and the scattering problem to be solved, providing both the power versus range profile and the plan position indicator (PPI) clutter map. A data-acquisition system, consisting of a commercial maritime radar and an A/D converter, is used to validate the developed software by comparison between simulations and measurements in the same environments. Some particular results, both measurements and simulations, belonging to a maritime scenario are presented.