Sea Clutter Cancellation for Passive Radar Sensor Exploiting Multi-Channel Adaptive Filters

Sea clutter suppression in passive radar sensor is a challenging problem because the Doppler frequencies of low-velocity sea-surface targets are typically close to the spectrum of the sea clutter. Conventional approaches based on single-channel high-pass filters are effective for clutter suppression only when the clutter is concentrated in low Doppler region. For sea clutter that has a spread spectrum, however, these approaches have to compromise target signal reception. That is, they either form a narrow notch which does not effectively suppress clutter, or generate a broadened null that simultaneously mitigates low-velocity target signals. Therefore, it is desirable to design a filter that forms a notch broad enough to cover the entire clutter spectrum, with the frequency response rising sharply to a high gain outside the clutter band. Toward this end, in this paper, we develop a generalized multi-channel adaptive filter which, by forming multiple sharp notches over a set of discrete frequencies within the clutter spectrum, achieves effective clutter suppression and target signal preservation. We focus on the fast frequency-domain implementation, and the performance analysis in terms of the frequency response, signal energy loss, and computational complexities is also presented. The effectiveness of the proposed approaches is verified using real-data results.