Improving performance of an FMCW radar in rain and sea clutter by satistical dithering

Detection of slowly moving low RCS sea targets by a coastal FMCW radar under sea clutter, rain clutter and Statistical Dithering (SD) conditions are examined. The statistics of the total clutter plus noise, the Total Interference (TI), are obtained by Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. K-Distribution (K-Dist) pdf is tail fitted to the PDF of TI. Practical equations are developed for the shape parameters of TI based on the Kurtosis of TI and MC simulations. It is observed that the performance of the radar is improved by moderate rain and SD significantly.