Sea Clutter: Scattering, the K Distribution and Radar Performance

This book provides an authoritative account of the current understanding of radar sea clutter, describing its phenomenology, EM scattering and statistical modelling and simulation, and their use in the design of detection systems and the calculation and practical evaluation of radar performance. The book pays particular attention to the compound K distribution model developed by the authors during the past 20 years. The evidence for this model, its mathematical formulation and development and practical application to the specification, design and evaluation of radar systems are all discussed. In addition, the book sets the previously empirical development of the K distribution model in the wider context of recent advances in the calculation of low grazing angle electromagnetic scattering and oceanographic modelling of the statistics of the sea surface. The authors discuss in detail the prediction of the performance of specified radar systems; at the same time, their presentation of the underlying physical principles and analytic and computational techniques employed in these calculations is sufficiently comprehensive for the reader to be well equipped to tackle related problems with confidence. These features, and appendices reviewing pertinent mathematical background material and the calculation of low grazing angle scattering by corrugated surfaces, make this book invaluable to specialist radar engineers and academic researchers, while being of considerable interest to the wider applied physics and mathematics communities.