Air Target Measurement Accuracy In The Presence Of Ground Clutter

Target tracking algorithms in radar systems have to operate in an environment of measurement uncertainty. A condition for good target tracking in a radar system is that a target position can be estimated and the measurement accuracy can be determined. The main problem is that clutter cannot be well defined by a stationary stochastic process and there is no known general model that works in different clutter environments. A mobile radar system is often presumed to be able to function in various environments such as: Sea, littoral regions, mountainous terrain, flatland and deserts. By using a target simulator with the actual radar system and a true clutter environment, a large amount of field data, is recorded during different system settings. These recordings are then used to estimate the systems measurement accuracy. The result is a fine-tuned algorithm of the measurement accuracy. The algorithm is evaluated and compared to the current system implementation using a target in a real clutter environment. The proposed model is shown to improve the accuracy estimations by 7 times compared to the current model in the elevation coordinate. An improvement of 3 times could be identified in the azimuth coordinate.