The ship target detection with improved orthogonal vector spectral estimation based on signal-subspace

On the basis of analysis of mechanism of ocean clutter production, an improved orthogonal vector spectral estimation method based on signal-subspace was proposed to use for the ship target detection with short coherent integration times(CITs) in the offing background. With this method, the sample data correlation matrix of the echo signal is treated by the forward/backward spatial (FB) smoothing technique firstly, and whose eigen-vector corresponding to the maximum eigenvalue is arranged as an unsymmetrical matrix by definite rule and there are also signal-subspace and orthogonal subspace in the singular value decomposition of the eigen-matrix, which can be used to ship target detection in the OTHR. Simulations proved that it is of higher resolution, and there is no sidelobes, with which the ship target can be detected efficaciously under the condition of CITs in the offing background.