Suppression of radar clutter with a weighted moving average filter

Unwanted radar echos, called clutter, make the detection of a target difficult. Therefore various methods have been proposed to suppress such clutters. However, since most of these methods are intended to improve single-pulse detection performance, the target often disappears by pulse-to-pulse fluctuations. In this paper, as a method of suppressing radar clutter, an application of a moving average and a weighted moving average to the data after pulse integration is proposed. First, with the K-distribution model proposed for modeling the clutter, the signal-to-clutter ratio is obtained in the case where infinite pulses are integrated. Next, a method is shown for derivation of the weights to be used for the weighted moving average. The results are shown for the process, using these weights for the sea clutter observed with an X-band radar. By using the moving average method in the experiment with an X-band radar, the signal-to-clutter ratio is improved by 4.2 dB compared with mere threshold detection, whereas the weighted moving average provides 5.0 dB improvement, which gives the better results.