A Subspace-Based Approach to Sea Clutter Suppression for Improved Target Detection

A key issue in detection of small targets on the ocean surface using active radar is low signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR), particularly in situations involving low grazing angle and high sea state. When sufficiently high pulse repetition rates are available, it is possible to obtain several samples of the clutter in a time interval short enough that key contributors to the clutter remain approximately stationary. This paper develops an approach to estimate the clutter subspace in such scenarios and exploit this estimate for clutter suppression and improved detection performance.