Investigation of the Impact of Sea Conditions on the Sea Surface Reflectivity in Maritime Radar Sea Clutter Modeling

Abstract

In this research, the dependency of radar target returns from an ocean surface on different sea conditions is investigated, and found that sea reflectivity has a strong dependency on sea conditions. We have seen that, sea surface reflectivity is proportionally correlated with frequency and marine roughness. The dependency of sea reflectivity on polarization and grazing angle is further investigated and found that when radar frequency is increased, the dependency on polarization is decreased, and while increasing grazing angle the dependency on it is decreased. We further investigated that for the same roughness and the variety of grazing angles taken, horizontally polarized transmissions have a lower reflectance than vertically polarized transmissions.