The Effect of MTI Filter and Number of Unique Staggers on First-Null Depth and Clutter Attenuation

A recent series of papers have provided a model for a staggered-PRF radar which can be used to estimate both the depth of the first null (which is dependent upon the ratio of some function fM(¿) of the set of M sampling deviations {¿m} to the average sampling interval) and the clutter attenuation (as a function of the product of fM(¿) and clutter standard deviation ¿c). Some inconsistencies in the aforementioned papers are discussed and it is shown that realistic filters and typical stagger-ratio sets produce results which differ significantly from the idealized-filter predictions. Furthermore, even after filtering the residual clutter power at dc is shown to be more significant than the power in all the displaced clutter spectra postulated by the aforementioned model.