An adaptive moving target indicator using burst averaging technique

The Adaptive Moving Target Indicator (AMTI) is an adaptive filter automatic ally suppressing the unwanted reflection echo (clutter) from the ocean surf ace, clouds, and rain contained in the radar receive signal. In this paper, with a view to assuring the suppression of the clutter in the case where t he AMTI is applied to search radar that can acquire only several samples of received signals with assuring coherence, a burst averaging type AMTI is p roposed. In this AMTI, the received signals without coherence from the same direction intermittently obtained by beam scanning are used for weighting control. From the performance evaluation by computer simulation, it is prov en that the clutter suppression capability can be improved by about 3 dB in comparison with the case without burst averaging for a steady single peak clutter. It is also clarified that the clutter suppression capability can b e improved by 0.3 to 1.8 dB by burst:averaging with two to five scans even in the case where the center frequency of the clutter changes for each beam scan as long as the frequency variation width is less than 12% with respec t to the pulse repetition frequency. (C) 2001 Scripta Technica, Electron Co mm Jpn Pt 2, 84(3): 28-35, 2001.