Multi-channel Sea Clutter Modeling and Characteristics Analysis for Spaceborne Early Warning Radar

Compared with the land clutter, the sea clutter exists severe inhomogeneity and time-varying property because of the random motion characteristics, causing the degradation of the space-time adaptive processing (STAP) performance. Therefore, the analysis of the sea clutter motion characteristics is necessary. In this paper, an elaborate multi-channel sea clutter model for spaceborne early warning radar is proposed and the clutter characteristics are analyzed according to the simulation results. Firstly, the Morchin model and the K distribution are applied to calculate the backscattering coefficients of sea clutter. In the meantime, the three-dimensional Gerstner wave model, the Pierson-Moskowitz wave spectrum, and the stereo wave observation project (SWOP) directional spectrum are combined to construct the sea surface to obtain the sea clutter motion model. Finally, the sea clutter characteristics are analyzed through the range-Doppler spectrum, the space-time power spectrum, the eigenvalue spectrum, and the minimum detectable velocity (MDV) curve.