Analysis of Sea Clutter with a Dual-Band Photonics-based Coherent Radar Network

Microwave photonics has the potential to allow the realization of coherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar networks with widely distributed antennas, thanks to the inherent coherence of photonics systems, and to the broadband, low-distortion, and interference-immune optical signal distribution.Recently, the first dual-band photonics-based coherent MIMO radar has been presented. The system, designed to operate in a real port for maritime traffic monitoring, has been integrated within the monitoring and control application (MoniCA) platform of the Port of Livorno, Italy, thus enabling the fusion of the radar data with other types of data managed by the multi-service MoniCA platform.This paper describes the statistical analysis performed on signals back-scattered from the sea and recorded by the photonics-based radar network. The statistical analysis of data shows that, under specific experimental and sea state conditions, the Rayleigh model fits well the signal amplitude distribution, thus easing the mathematical tractability of the target detection problem.