RadarStation: A site-specific tool for simulating clutter-limited radar systems

This paper presents the RadarStation program. A general analytical method is used to predict land/sea clutter strengths for low-angle monostatic radars in each particular scenario. In order to characterise the environment and solve the electromagnetic problem, RadarStation makes use of Physical Optics (PO), in particular the Kirchhoff approximation, and Digital Terrain Models (DTM), and provides 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 specific results for a maritime scenario, both measurements and simulations, are discussed and finally, a statistical analysis of the simulated clutter is presented.