Improved target detection in a littoral environment

Radar detection of airborne targets in a littoral environment generally requires the utilization of medium to high PRF waveforms and a Doppler filter bank to attenuate the clutter and enhance the target return. In a littoral environment, with multiple interval sea and land clutter and small radar cross section targets, this processing may not be sufficient to detect the target. What is proposed in this paper is a procedure whereby with pre-transmission probing of the competing clutter an optimal waveform can be transmitted and optimally processed in the receiver. The design of this waveform implies amplitude and phase weighting of the transmitted and received pulses. Weighting of the transmitted pulses is also referred to as signal weighting. The theory of this optimization procedure is described. Typical numerical results are presented for 7-, 11-, and 14-pulse bursts, and summary performance numbers are tabulated. Typical convergence performance of the optimization procedure as a function of the number of iterations is illustrated, and our conclusions for the utilization of this technique are listed.