Radar clutter attractor: implications for physics, signal processing and control

A disscussion is presented on the chaotic dynamics of sea clutter in the li ght of current knowledge about chaos theory. The discussion builds on exper imental results reported by Haykin and Puthusserypady (1997, 1999) on the c haotic dynamics of sea clutter under varying environmental conditions and o n the dynamic reconstruction of sea clutter using a regularised radial-basi s function network (Haykin et al., 1998). The experimental results presente d are for a marine radar operating at low grazing angles. The implications of the chaotic dynamics of sea clutter are discussed in the context of phys ical aspects of sea clutter, simulation of sea clutter, the detection of a target signal embedded in sea clutter, and the stability of the predictive model used to perform the dynamic reconstruction of sea clutter.