An Efficient Scan-to-Scan Integration/Correlation Algorithm for Sea Surveillance Radar

In most sea surveillance radars based on non-coherent integration, the scan-to-scan integration which improves signal to noise ratio and mitigates unwanted echo with a small correlation time is widely used to extract stationary and slow moving targets. The problems of the conventional scan-to-scan integration are: (a) the target tail is generated through integrating previous scans and current scan with respect to a fast moving target which has a high radar cross section; (b) it is difficult to detect a small and fast moving target due to the attenuated small target echo. In this contribution, the problems of the conventional scan-to-scan integration are investigated carefully by using time series analysis, and then an efficient scan-to-scan integration/correlation algorithm is proposed to overcome the problems of the existing techniques. In the proposed algorithm, the signal selection logic eliminating the unwanted target tail and recovering the attenuated target echo has been operated according to the difference between the current and previous scans with two thresholds. Simulation results demonstrate the proposed algorithm’s performance of detecting a small and fast moving target without the target tail effect.