Chaotic dynamics of sea clutter: an experimental study

We demonstrate, convincingly for the first time, the chaotic dynamics of sea clutter. This is based on the results obtained from a series of extensive and thorough experiments, which were made with different sea clutter data sets. The study includes correlation dimension analysis (based on the maximum likelihood principle) and Lyapunov spectrum analysis. The Lyapunov (Kaplan-Yorke) dimension, which is a by-product of the Lyapunov spectrum analysis, is found to be a good estimator of the correlation (fractal) dimension