Optimised Scan-to-Scan Integration Techniques for Low Observable Target Detection in Sea Clutter

Detection of low RCS (Radar Cross section) targets (e.g small boats) immersed in Sea clutter has always been a challenge, but with a critical detection requirement. Apart from small boats entering into the territorial waters, Unmanned Aviation Vehicles over land and sea that are involved in EW assignments and also submarine periscopes are targets of interest. Such targets have weak reflected/scattered power, masked by strong correlated sea clutter and ground clutter returns. Extracting such weaker and unstable target returns requires efficient, reliable and robust Target detection methods and techniques. One of the detection methods viz Scan to Scan integration and their enhancement, exploiting the decorrelation properties of sea clutter over several antenna scans, will be analysed in this paper, with appropriate illustrations.