A novel method of small target detection in sea clutter

Abstract

Detecting low observable targets within sea clutter at low grazing angle is one of the research hotspots in radar signal processing community. In this paper, we have proposed a novel method based on polarimetric decomposition theorem. The polar characteristics of sea clutter has been analyzed, with the parameters after the decomposition of target scattering matrix. The scattering entropy and the scattering angle are the key parameters to discriminate the target from the sea clutter. The technique is designed to suppress unwanted sea clutter at polarimetric domain. Datasets from real marine radar are used to illustrate the performance of the new approach.