RADAR CLUTTERS

UNIT 9

RADAR CLUTTERS
SURFACE CLUTTER RADAR EQUATION SEA CLUTTER LAND CLUTTER EFFECTS OF WEATHER ON RADAR ANGLES ECHOES

Introduction to Radar clutter

Clutter is the term used to denote unwanted echoes from the natural environment.

These unwanted echoes clutter the radar and make difficult the detection of wanted targets. There are also point, or discrete, clutter echoes, like TV and water towers, buildings , and other similar structures that produce large backscatter.

Clutters
Large clutter echoes can mask echoes from desired targets and limit radar capability. When clutter is much larger than receiver noise, the optimum radar waveform and signal processing can be quite different from that employed when only receiver noise is the dominant limitation on sensitivity.

 Radar echoes from the environment are not always undesired. Reflections from storm clouds, can be a trouble to a radar that must detect aircraft; but storm clouds containing rain are what the radar meteorologist wants to detect in order to measure rain fall rate over a large area. The backscatter echoes form land can interfere with many applications of radar, but they are the target of interest for ground mapping radar, synthetic aperture (space) radars, and radars that observe earth resources.

 Thus the same environmental echo might be the desired signal in one application and the undesired clutter echo in another.

Remote sensing of the environment

The observation of land, sea, weather and other natural phenomena by radar and other sensors for the purpose of determining something about the environment is known as Remote sensing of the environment or Remote Sensing.

Eg. Doppler weather Radar is used for Remote sensing.

 SURFACE CLUTTER : Echoes from land or sea. VOLUME CLUTTER : Echoes from rain and chaff.

The magnitude of the echo from distributed surface clutter is proportional to the area illuminated. In order to have a measure of the clutter echo that is independent of the illuminated area, the clutter cross section per unit area, denoted by the symbol 0, is used to describe surface clutter.

CHAFFS USED IN RADARS

Strips of metal, foil, or glass fiber with a metal content, cut into various lengths and having varying frequency responses, that are used to reflect electromagnetic energy as a radar countermeasure. These materials, usually dropped from aircraft, also can be deployed from shells or rockets.

Sigma Zero 0
It is also called as Scattering coefficient Differential scattering cross section Normalized radar reflectivity Backscattering coefficient Normalized radar cross section (NRCS)

 The clutter cross section per unit area, ( Sigma Zero) 0 = c Ac (7.1)

Where c = radar cross section of the clutter occupying an area Ac.

 The Zero is a super script since the subscript is reserved for the polarization employed. Sigma Zero is a dimensionless quantity and is expressed in decibels with a reference value of one m2/m2. Similarly a cross section per unit volume is used to characterize volume clutter. It is defined as = c
Vc

c Vc

Eqn (7.2)

Where c in this case is the radar cross section of the clutter that occupies a volume V c. Clutter cross section per unit volume , is called the Reflectivity.

Multipath reduces the energy propagating at low angles because of cancellation of the direct energy by the out of phase surface reflected energy.

Grazing angle
The grazing angle is used to describe the aspect at which clutter is viewed. INCIDENCE ANGLE It is defined with respect to the normal to the surface The Grazing angle is defined with respect to the tangent to the surface. DEPRESSION ANGLE It is defined with respect to the local horizontal at the radar.

local horizontal at the radar used for Rough or varying earths surface

Tangent to the surface (Aspect at which clutter is viewed) Backscatter can be quite large at high grazing angles

Normal to the surface (Complement of Grazing angle)

 The incidence angle is the complement of the grazing angle. When the earths surface can be considered smooth and flat, the depression angle and the grazing angle are the same. When the earths curvature must be taken into account as in space borne radars, the depression angle can be quite different from the grazing angle. The incidence angle is usually used when considering earth backscatter at near perpendicular incidence, as in the altimeter and the scatterometer.

 Some engineers prefer to use the depression angle when a rough or varying earths surface is viewed at low grazing angles since it might be easier to determine than the grazing angle when the earth is not a flat surface.

Variation of surface clutter with grazing angle

There are three different scattering regions. At high grazing angles, the radar echo is due to mainly reflections from clutter that can be represented as a number of individual planar facets oriented so that the incident energy is directed back to the radar. The backscatter (is the reflection of waves, particles, or signals back to the direction from which they came)can be quite large at high grazing angles.

 At the intermediate grazing angles, back scattering is influenced by shadowing (masking) and by multipath propagation.

Shadowing of the trough regions by the crest of waves prevents low lying scatters form being illuminated.
Multipath reduces the energy propagating at low angles because of cancellation of the direct energy by the out of phase surface reflected energy.

 The curve drawn in fig. 7.3 is descriptive of the general character of both land and sea scattering; but there are significant differences in the details depending on the particular type of clutter. The difference between the maximum clutter at perpendicular incidence and the minimum clutter at grazing incidence can be many tens of dB.

Surface Clutter Radar Equation

LOW GRAZING ANGLE: Consider the geometry of fig. which depicts a radar illuminating the surface at a grazing angle

.
Assume the grazing angle is small. A small grazing angle usually implies that the extent of the resolution cell in the range dimension is determined by the radar pulse width rather than the elevation beam width.

 The width of the cell in the cross range dimension is determined by the azimuth beam width B and the range R. The power C received from the clutter is

 Clutter cross section is given as :

Where C is the velocity of propagation

With this substitution the radar equation for surface clutter is

(13-5)

Thus the echo from surface clutter varies inversely as the cube of the range rather than inversely as the fourth power as is the case for point targets.

The signal power S returned from a target with cross section t.

(13-6)

 Combining Eqs. (13.5) and (13.6), the signalto-clutter ratio for a target in a background of surface clutter at low grazing angle is

If the maximum range R max, corresponds to the minimum discernible signal-to-clutter ratio ( S/C)min then the radar equation can be written

 In this equation, the clutter power C is assumed large compared to receiver noise power. This is an entirely different form of the radar equation than when the target detection is dominated by receiver noise alone. The range in Eq. (13.8) appears as the first power rather than as the fourth power in the usual radar equation of Eq. (13.6). This means there is likely to be greater variation in the maximum range of a clutter-dominated radar than a noisedominated radar.

 For example, if the target cross section in Eq. (13.8) were to vary by a factor of two, the maximum range would also vary by a factor of two. However, the same variation in target cross section would only cause a variation in range of a factor of 1.2 when the radar performance is determined by receiver noise.

 The transmitter power does not appear explicitly. Increasing the transmitter power will indeed increase the target signal, but it will also cause a corresponding increase in clutter.

Thus there is no net gain in the delectability of desired targets.

 The only demand on the transmitter power is that it be great enough to cause the clutter power at the radar receiver to be large compared to receiver noise. If otherwise, Eq. (13.8) would not apply.

 The antenna gain does not enter, except as it is affected by the azimuth beam width B . The narrower the pulse width the greater the range.

This is just opposite to the case of conventional radar detection of targets in noise.

 A long pulse is desired when the radar is limited by noise in order to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. When clutter dominates noise, a long pulse decreases the signal-to-clutter ratio.

 When pulse compression is used, the pulse width ,in eqn (13.8 ) is that of the compressed pulse. If the statistics of the clutter echoes are similar to the statistics of receiver noise, then the signal to clutter ratio in eqn. (13.8) can be selected similar to that for signal to noise ratio as described in simple eqn. The improvement in range due to the integration of n pulses is not indicated in this eqn. There can be a considerable difference in the integration when clutter limited from when noise limited.

 Clutter echoes , unlike receiver noise, might be correlated pulse to pulse , especially if the clutter is stationary relative to the radar. Radar noise is usually de correlated in a time equal to 1/B, where B = receiver (IF) bandwidth.

The de correlation time of clutter is usually much greater than this.

SEA CLUTTER

SEA CLUTTER
Sea-clutter are disturbing radar-echoes of sea wave crests. This clutter gets also a Doppler- speed by the wind. This means, the scenario moves away, i.e. changes with time, while for ground clutter it stays the same. Therefore, in practice, Sea-clutter is very difficult to control without some loss in detection. Sea-Clutter can be seen here in the picture. The wind comes either from about 310 (NO) or from the opposite direction. (Unfortunately, whether the Doppler frequency is positive or negative cannot be recognized on the PPI-Scope.) But this region, in which the radial speed of the waves is very small, is cleaned by the MTI system very clearly.

 The radar echo from the sea when viewed at low grazing angles is generally smaller than the echo from land.

The nature of the radar echo from the sea depends upon the shape of the sea surface.
Echoes are obtained form those parts of the sea whose scale sizes (roughness) are comparable in dimension to the radar wavelength.

 The shape , or roughness of the sea depends on the wind. Sea clutter also depends on the pointing direction of the radar antenna beam relative to the direction of the wind. Sea clutter can be affected by contaminants that change the water surface tension. The temperature of the water relative to that of the air is also thought to have an effect on sea

LAND CLUTTER
General nature of land clutter is determined at low, medium and high grazing angle.

Land clutter at low Grazing angle

An extensive multiple frequency database of land clutter at low angels was acquired by the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. This is one of the few collections of land clutter data that have been obtained over a long period of time.

Measurements were made at five frequencies:

VHF(167 MHz) UHF (435 MHz) L ( 1.23 MHz) S (3.24 GHz) X ( 9.2 GHz) bands.

 The Radars were mobile with antennas mounted on a tower that could be extended to heights of 30, 60, or 100 ft.

Range resolution was either 150 m or 36 m at VHF and UHF.

At the other three frequencies, the resolution was either 150m or 15 m. Both vertical and horizontal polarizations were employed.

 The rms accuracy of the clutter echo measurements over all sites was said to be 2 dB, a very good value for field operations.

The radar measured 0 F4 called the clutter strength ,

Where 0 is the clutter cross section per unit area and F is the propagation factor used in radar equation to account for effects such as multipath reflections, diffraction, and attenuation.

Propagation factor F
Defined as : Ratio of the incident field that actually exists at the clutter cell being measured to the incident field that would exist there if the clutter cell existed by itself in free space. Clutter observations were made at low depression angles, at ranges from 1 to 25 or 50 km or more.

 The depression angle was used rather than the grazing angle since it was difficult to define the grazing angle over a non flat surface such as natural terrain. The depression angle is the complement of the incidence angle at the backscattering terrain point under consideration.

This definition includes the effect of earth curvature on the angle of illumination but not the effect of the local terrain slope.

 Clutter strength is given as the median value of the measured means by terrain type and frequency.

The values in the figure and table were averaged over both vertical and horizontal polarizations, and with both 150 m and 15 or 36 m range resolution. This averaging was done since the variations of the mean clutter echo with both polarization and resolution were small, generally about 1 or 2 dB.

 A radar which must detect targets over land has a more difficult task than one which must detect targets over the sea. Even though a radar at sea might not be bothered by sea clutter, nearby land clutter can be so large that it can enter the radar via the antenna side lobes and degrade performance.

At vertical incidence there is less backscatter from land than from sea, but this is usually undesirable since it reduces the range of radar altimeters over land.

 Land clutter is difficult to quantify and classify. The Radar echo from land depends on the type of terrain as described by its roughness and dielectric properties. Desert , forest , vegetable, bare soil, cultivated fields, mountains , swamps, cities , roads and lakes all have different scattering characteristics. The radar echo will depend on the moisture content of the surface scatterers, snow cover, and the stage of growth of any vegetation.

 Building , towers, and other structures give more intense echo signals than forest or vegetation because of the presence of flat reflecting surfaces and Corner Reflectors. Bodies of water, roads and airport runways backscatter little energy but are recognizable on radar PPI displays as black areas amid the brightness of the surrounding ground echoes. A hill will appear to stand out in high relief on a PPI.

 The near side of the hill will give a large return, while the far side, which is relatively hidden from the view of the radar, will give little of no return. The radar cross section of a farmers field will differ before and after ploughing, as well as before and after harvesting.

It will also depend on the direction of the radar beam relative to the direction of the ploughed furrows.

 The echo from forest differs depending on the season. Sea echo is more uniform over the oceans of the world, providing the wind conditions are the same.

Information about the radar backscatter from land is required for several different applications, each of which has its own special needs. These applications include:

The detection of aircraft over land , where the clutter echoes might be as much as 50 to 60 dB greater than aircraft echoes. MTI or pulse-doppler radar is commonly used for this application to remove the background clutter. The detection of surface targets over land, where moving vehicles or personnel can be separated from clutter by means of MTI. Fixed targets require high resolution for their detection. Altimeters which measure the height of aircraft or spacecraft. Large clutter energy is desired since the "clutter" is the target.

The detection of terrain features such as hills and mountains ahead of an aircraft to warn of approaching high ground (terrain avoidance) or t o allow the aircraft to follow the contour of the land(terrain following)
Mapping or imaging radars that utilize high resolution. Ground objects are recognized by their shape and contrast with surroundings. Remote sensing with imaging radars. altimeters, or scatterometers to obtain specific information about the nature of the surface characteristics.

 The data for land clutter is usually reported in terms of 0, the cross section per unit area. It is sometimes given by a parameter which equals 0 /sin ,

Where is the grazing angle. For ideal rough terrain, is approximately independent of the angle , except at low grazing angles and near perpendicular incidence.
An example of clutter 0 for several broad

 This applies to X-band clutter. The boundaries of the various regions are wide to indicate the wide variation of the data within the classes of terrrain. Figure 13.9 illustrates airborne data at X and L bands. The azimuth beam width was 50 and the pulse width was 0.5 s at each frequency. The lack of smoothness of the data is due in part, to the fact that the data was not all taken at the same time. For a paticular grazing angle the two frequencies had to be obtained by reflying the aircraft along the same flight path. Different grazing angles also required reflying the aircraft over the same area. Each point on the curve us an average over 1 to 2 miles of ground track.

EFFECTS OF WEATHER ON RADAR ANGLES ECHOES

Radar could see through weather effects such as fog, rain, or snow. Performance of some radars can be strongly affected by the presence of meteorological particles (hydrometeors). In general, radars at the lower frequencies are not bothered by meteorological or weather effects, but at the higher frequencies, weather echoes may be quite strong and mask the desired target signals just as any other unwanted clutter signal.

 Whether the radar detection of meteorological particles such as rain, snow, or hail is a blessing or a curse depends upon one's point of view. Weather echoes are a nuisance to the radar operator whose job is to detect aircraft or ship targets. Echoes from a storm, for example, might mask or confuse the echoes from targets located at the same range and azimuth. Radar return from rain, snow, or hail is of considerable importance in meteorological research and weather prediction. Radar may be it used to give an up-to date pattern of precipitation in the area around the radar.

 It is a simple and inexpensive gauge for measuring the precipitation over relatively large expanses. As a rain gauge it is quite useful to the hydrologist in determining the amount of water falling into a watershed during a given period of time. Radar has been used extensively for the study of thunderstorms, squall lines, tornadoes, hurricanes, and in cloud-physics research.

 Not only is radar useful as a means of studying the basic properties of these phenomena, but it may also be used for gathering the information needed for predicting the course of the weather. Hurricane tracking and tornado warning are examples of applications in which radar has proved its worth in the saving of life and property. Another important application of radar designed for the detection of weather echoes is in airborne weatheravoidance radars, whose function is to indicate to the aircraft pilot the dangerous storm areas to be avoided.

Scattering from water-coated ice spheres

Moisture in the atmosphere at altitudes where the temperature is below freezing takes the form of ice crystals, snow, or hail. As these particles tall to the ground they melt and change to rain in the warmer environment of the lower altitudes. When this occurs, there is an increase in the radar backscatter since water particles reflect more strongly than ice. As the ice particles, snow, or hail begin to melt, they first become water-coated ice spheroids.

 At radar wavelengths, scattering and attenuation by water-coated ice spheroids the size of wet snowflakes is similar in magnitude to that of spheroidal water drops of the same size and shape. Even for comparatively thin coatings of water, the composite particle scatters nearly as well as a similar all-water particle.

 Radar observations of light precipitation show a horizontal" bright band" at an altii ude at which the temperature is just above Oc. The measured reflectivity in the center of the bright band is typically about 12 to 15 dB greater. than the reflectivity from the snow above it and about 6 to 10 dB greater than the rain below. The center of the bright band is generally from about 100 to 400 m below the OC is isotherm. Although the bright band is relatively thin, considerable attenuation can occur' when radar observations are made through it at low elevations.

 The bright band is due to changes in snow falling through the freezing level. At the onset of melting the snow changes from flat or needle-shaped particles which scatter feebly to similarly shaped particles which, owing to a water coating, scatter relatively strongly. As melting progresses, the particles lose their extreme shapes, and their velocity of fall increases causing a decrease in the number of particles per unit volume and a reduction In the backscatter.

Scattering from cloud

Most cloud droplets do not exceed 100 m in diameter ( 1m = 10 -6 m); consequently Rayleigh scattering may be applied at radar frequencies for the prediction of cloud echoes. In Rayleigh scattering, the backscatter is proportional to the sixth power of the diameter (eqn 13.17)

 Since the diameter of could droplets is about one- hundredth the diameter of rain drops , the echoes from fair weather clouds are usually of little concern. It is also possible to obtain weak echoes from a deep, intense fog at millimeter, wavelengths but at wavelengths of 3 cm and longer , echoes due to fog may generally be regarded as insignificant.

Attenuation in Precipitation
When precipitation (rain /Rainfall) particles are small compared to the radar wavelength ( Rayleigh Region) , the attenuation due to absorption is small. This is the case for frequencies below S band. Since rain attenuation is usually small and unimportant at the longer wavelengths, the relative simplicity of the Rayleigh scattering approximation is of limited use for predicting attenuation through rain.

 The computation of rain attenuation must therefore be based on a more exact formulation, the results of which are shown in fig. as a function of wavelength and rainfall rate. The attenuation produced by ice particles in the atmosphere, whether occurring as hail, snow or ice crystal clouds, is less than caused by rain of an equivalent rate of precipitation.

Effect of weather on Radar

Because the echo from precipitation varies as f 4 , where f = frequency, UHF radars ( 420 450 MHz) are seldom bothered by weather effects. At L band weather echoes can be a problem and some method for seeing aircraft targets in weather is usually needed. A radar at S band will have its range considerably reduced in modest rainfall if

 Radars at higher frequencies are even further degraded by rain. Airborne weather avoidance radars at X band , for eg. Can be severely degraded by heavy rain and prevent the radar from seeing hazardous weather. A typical specification for an air surveillance radar might be that it has to detect its target when rainfall in the vicinity of the target is at the rate of 4 mm/h.

 This is called a moderate rain. Attenuation is not a problem at frequencies below X band, unless the precipitation is very heavy.