Howtosignalprocessing
Clutter is a term used for unwanted echoes in electronic systems, particularly in reference to radars. Such echoes are typically returned from ground, sea, rain, animals/insects, chaff and atmospheric turbulences, and can cause serious performance issues with radar systems.
- What causes radar clutter?
- How clutter affects the radar observation?
- What is the function of clutter control in radar?
- What is clutter attenuation?
What causes radar clutter?
Typical sources of clutter are birds, trees, bodies of water, and weather (rain, snow, fog). Clutter can cause false alarms in a radar system and limit the ability to process true target detections, posing a significant threat to warfighters.
How clutter affects the radar observation?
Rain clutter can seriously affect the performance of radars at L band and higher. Unless doppler processing is used, S band and higher frequency radars are seriously degraded (clobbered) in rain. Snow generally is not as serious as rain in reducing radar performance.
What is the function of clutter control in radar?
The “anti- Sea Clutter” control reduces sensitivity near the center, in order to remove the clutter, but does not affect long distance detection. As you increase the “anti-Sea Clutter” control, the gain suppression moves outwards from the center of the display.
What is clutter attenuation?
Clutter attenuation (CA): The ratio of the clutter power at the filter input to the clutter power at the filter output. • MTI improvement factor: The output target-to-clutter ratio divided by the input target-to-clutter ratio.
