Search

In addition to target echoes, high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) receives sea and ionospheric clutter. Among these clutters, the ionospheric clutter is dominant and significantly affects the detection performance of HFSWR, particularly when the targets are located 100 kilometers away from the radar, rendering it an unsolved problem for HFSWR. Existing studies concerning HFSWR ionospheric clutter lack empirical research on the nonlinear dynamical characteristics of the ionosphere of HFSWR as existing ionospheric suppression methods are still insufficient to adapt the project application. Therefore, the present study utilized the threshold segmentation method to eliminate the sea clutter in HFSWR Range-Doppler spectrum and extracted ionospheric signals from this spectrum by edge feature extraction. Subsequently, the chaotic invariants, such as correlation dimension and the largest Lyapunov exponent of HFSWR ionospheric clutter, were calculated by phase space reconstruction, whilst the chaotic dynamical characteristics of HFSWR ionospheric clutter were determined by the 0-1 test for chaos and other algorithms. Furthermore, the present study demonstrated, for the first time, the chaotic dynamics of the ionospheric clutter of HFSWR with a low-dimensional attractor by processing and analyzing the experimental data from the Weihai High Frequency Radar Station. The conclusion redefines HFSWR ionospheric clutter based on chaotic dynamics rather than regarding it as a stochastic process, which is conducive to efforts to explore the formation mechanism of ionospheric clutter in essence, which can ultimately improve the detection capability of HFSWR, particularly for long-distance targets.

In the practical application of high-frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR), ionospheric clutter has become the principal obstacle to target detection. Since ionospheric clutter has nonlinear and time-varying characteristics, the current suppression methods still require improvement. In this letter, we proposed a method merging the deep neural networks (DNNs) and linear Koopman operator from the dynamic perspective, combining the powerful learning capacity of neural networks and the interpretability of Koopman theory, and applied linear Koopman mode to represent nonlinear ionospheric clutter in the state space based on time-delayed coordinates to achieve the finite-dimensional linear approximate reconstruction of ionospheric clutter. The validation results of the measured data reveal that the method has satisfactory modeling accuracy, which proves the effectiveness of the approach and lays the foundations for the subsequent breakthrough in new methods for ionospheric clutter suppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For multiple-input multiple-output radar employing the advantage of virtual array, the general assumption of the perfect orthogonality between multiple waveforms is proved to be unachievable. Therefore, to achieve good orthogonality, transmission schemes employing frequency diversity or chirp modulation diversity have been extensively investigated. Inspired by the idea of “diversity means superiority,” approach which integrates multiple diversities in a single waveform might be used to improve the orthogonality. In this paper, a novel waveform named discrete frequency and chirp-rate coding waveform (DFCCW) consisting of both frequency and chirp modulation diversities is proposed. Based on the auto- and cross-ambiguity functions of the DFCCW, we prove that the proposed approach is able to decrease the cross ambiguity peak values. To generate and optimize a set of Pareto-optimal DFCCWs, a many-objective optimization algorithm named nondominated sorting genetic algorithm with differential evolution is presented. Besides, the optimal criteria considering Doppler effects ensure that the DFCCW possess good performance in presence of moving targets. Numerical results show that the DFCCW achieves better orthogonality than the waveforms that utilize only single diversity type. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The extension of onshore high-frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR) to shipborne HFSWR has the advantage of extended monitoring area and high application flexibility. However, additional modulation on the echo signal introduced by the forward movement and six-degree-of-freedom (6-DOF) ship motion may increase the surface current measurement error. Considering the radar array position on the ship, six-DOF ship motion, forward movement velocity, first-order Bragg scatter, and background noise, this paper models the backscattered Doppler spectrum of shipborne HFSWR. Based on this model, the performance of surface radial current measurement is analyzed, with the adoption of the MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) to estimate the azimuth of the sea patches. Simulation results show that, rotation, sway and forward movement of the ship all have significant impacts on the surface radial current measure error. Nevertheless, if the ship sails at relative low speed and keeps its sailing direction (with small yaw amplitude), shipborne HFSWR may provide a better result than onshore HFSWR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]