Performance evaluation of correlation detector for HF Surface Wave Radar

HF Surface Wave Radar (SWR) can provide cost effective coastal surveillance. Recently invented correlation detector observes the correlation of received power along the azimuth axis across neighboring Range Doppler (RD) cells to detect the presence of a target in a given RD cell. Using measured data successful detection of targets on the clutter edges and within first and second order sea clutter has already been demonstrated. The degradation in the performance of the detector due to relative position of a target with respect to the center of range bin is evaluated. Therefore, a synthetic target of variable range, velocity and Radar Cross Section (RCS) is placed inside the measured data from a coastal HF SWR.