Generation of correlated sea clutter for radar test

Test, measurement and verification of radar systems with their detection and processing capabilities are necessary to ensure function according to specification and requirements. Therefore field tests are often performed to test the radar system. This is not only expensive, but also requires a great deal of time. To reduce test complexity and cost, simulation techniques such as radar target simulators are used which bring parts of the field back into the laboratory environment. Target simulators however generate targets with a certain range, radial velocity, but struggle to simulate clutter, or in particular, sea clutter. This paper therefore introduces an approach to generate sea clutter and replay the signal with a vector signal generator. It shows common approaches modeling sea clutter statistically and introduces a novel approach to combine the statistical models with a physical ocean surface model. The simulated data is compared with measured data from different locations. This way, time and spatially correlated data that reproduces real-world sea clutter is generated and presented a less expensive and more time efficient way to conduct sea trials.