Waveform Selection for a Scanning Radar in the Maritime Environment

Abstract

Detection of slow moving targets for a scanning radar in the maritime domain is typically performed using noncoherent detectors with both pulse-to-pulse and/or scan-to-scan integration. Other processing options include coherent processing for slowly scanning radars and pulse-to-pulse frequency agility which decorrelates the clutter, but restricts the processing to non-coherent. This paper studies the impact of these processing options when operating in different environments and proposes a guide for selecting the waveform that optimises the detection performance.