Effect of Curved Path Monopulse Radar Platform’s Grazing Angle on Height of Floated Targets Detection

Monopulse radarsare one of the most accurate tracking radars used to guide various platforms. Detection and tracking of surface targets with these radars are performed in order to point strike targets. Sea clutter presents challenges for detecting floated targets and in addition to affecting detection height, it can cause errors in monopulse angle finding. In this paper, the airborne monopulse radar with high squint angle has been considered. The radar platform has a curved path. Under conditions of ragged sea, sea clutter has been modeled with k distribution and simulation of return signal from sea surface with big size targets has been performed for the first time. Also, we have analyzed the detection heights in various platforms grazing angles in this paper. The results indicated that by increasing the grazing angle, the height of detecting floated targets decreases due to the increase in the clutter power in comparison with the power of returned signal from targets. Due to the significant changes in the simulation parameters of sea Clutter at the angles i.e. gamma function and Omega parameter, the novelty of this paper is simulation of the sea clutter in range and in high grazing angle (55 to 75 degrees), which has not been reported literatures. Sea clutter simulation using the cumulative distribution function (CDF) k is another novelty. Detection of moving target on sea surface with given curved path of the radar platform and real parameters for the simulation have also been performed for the first time.