HF radar ship detection and tracking using WERA system

High frequency (HF) radars are capable to detect and track targets at extremely long ranges. The signal environment that includes external noise, different kinds of clutter and interference will significantly limit the detection performance and system capability. This paper considers a new approach to solve the ship detection and tracking problem in a complex HF radar signal environment. It uses a conventional constant false-alarm-rate (CFAR) detection procedure but the thresh-olding scheme is based on regression analysis of power spectrum values along range and Doppler cells. The ship tracking scheme includes the model in polar coordinates that uses tracking state vector consisted of range, azimuth and velocities and fixed-coefficient filter parameters to get smoothed tracks. The proposed detection and tracking schemes have been tested using real HF radar data from WERA system.