A scheme of auto ship detection for skywave OTH radar within short CITs

Auto ship detection for high frequency (HF) skywave over-the-horizon (OTH) radar, being a valuable application, has not been achieved virtually within short coherent integration times (CITs). Because the ships' lines in the spectrum can be covered by the ocean clutter's easily as a result of the poor resolution, which attenuates the validities of ocean clutter suppression algorithms. Besides, when the backscatter echo of ocean clutter becomes complicated, which can often be caused by the complex environmental factors, the performance of ocean clutter suppression algorithms also degrades. To achieve auto ship detection within short CITs, a scheme employing algorithms including Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP), eigenvalue-decomposition (EVD) and constant false alarm rate (CFAR) processor, called OEC scheme which is the acronym for the methods applied, is proposed in this paper. Simulations approves the validation of the scheme.