The effect of phase noise on the remote sensing of ocean surface currents

This paper studied the phase noise effect on the range spectrum and Doppler spectrum measured by high frequency (HF) radar which was used for remote sensing of sea surface state parameters. The presence of phase noise in the master oscillator caused a widening of the range spectrum and clutter velocity spectrum, degrading the range and velocity resolution. In this paper, a practical phase noise model is presented, and based on it, the relationship between the phase noise power spectrum density (PSD) and cumulative phase noise is investigated. Then, the basic minimum requirements for the PSD are calculated to maintain radar performance. The results show that a commercial off the shelf oscillator can meet the phase noise requirements.