RADAR CLUTTER
Radar Glossary
Radar — Radar Clutter
Information on Radar Clutter
The term radar clutter refers to any objects
that cause unwanted reflections of a radar's electromagnetic energy to
be returned to the radar receiver. The unwanted returns compete
with valid returns of interest and cause the radar receiver
and displays to become cluttered and more difficult to decipher.
There
are many sources of clutter some of which are covered
in this chapter. As a broad rule, however, anything that
is not a valid target but causes radar reflections to
mix with target reflections can be considered clutter. Possible sources
of radar clutter include land and sea surfaces,
rain, birds and livestock, and atmospheric effects.
Generally, radar clutter is spread over much larger areas than targets and
often exceeds the dimensions of the radar's resolution cell (defined
by pulse width and antenna characteristics). This type of clutter
is said to be spatial clutter and examples include sea
or land surface. Other clutter may fall within the radar's
resolution cell and be more approximate of the target dimensions.
This type of clutter is called point clutter and examples
include power poles and individual animals.
Radar clutter can
dominate the radar return and effectively desensitise and confuse both
the receiver and the operator. Cluttered displays impact on operator
performance by making target identification more difficult, and hastening the
onset of operator fatigue.
Depending on the specific radar application, a
surveillance radar system can be adversely impacted by, say, rain,
during attempts to detect incoming aircraft. At precisely the same
instance, a weather radar may be searching for returns from
the rain in order to plot the local weather patterns.
To that end, one application's radar clutter may
well be another's target so it is not possible to
list sources of radar clutter without an understanding
of the radar application.
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