Hard threshold correlation detector for mobile HF Surface Wave Radar

Mobile HF Surface Wave Radar (SWR) can be realized by an offshore distributed receiver array structure which communicates to the central processing unit at the base station via a wireless link. State of the art detectors demand a sophisticated signal processing which can only be done at base station hence making it imperative to transmit raw data form receiver to the base station. The proposed detector is different in two aspects; firstly it is not processing intensive so can be implemented on the limited hardware of an offshore receiver. So instead of raw data, a periodic detection list can be communicated to the base station which will be equipped with a complex tracker. This eases the bandwidth requirement on the link and provides a more real time update of the target scenario. The speed and simplicity of the detector is achieved by a wind speed dependent hard threshold which can be loaded from a look up table. Secondly the proposed detector uses oceanographic models and can detect targets within the first order sea clutter. The detector is verified with measured data from a coastal HF SWR.