OTHR-SW Coordinate Registration method based on sea-land transitions: Clutter model definition

In previous works we proposed a Coordinate Registration (CR) method of the received echo by pulsed, monostatic Over The Horizon Sky Wave Radar (OTHRsw). This method takes advantage from the a priori geo-morphological knowledge of the surveillance area (especially the coastline profile) and from the pronounced difference between the sea and land normalized backscattering coefficients. In this paper we present a model of surface clutter, its software implementation and its role in the simulation tool under development intended to recreate the complex OTHR scenario in order to analyze the performances of the proposed CR method. A brief introduction about the radar scenario is given; the main clutter model hypotheses are outlined; the adopted space-time distributions processes are motivated; the key-parameters for the model configuration are described; some examples of simulated clutter scenarios are proposed; the achieved results are finally shown.