A Simple and Efficient Scan Correlation Algorithm for Sea Surveillance Radar

In most sea surveillance radars based on non-coherent integration, the scan integration which improves signal to noise ratio and mitigates unwanted echo with a small correlation time such as sea clutter is widely used. The problems of the conventional scan integration are: (a) the target trail is generated through integrating prior scan and current scan; (b) it is difficult to detect a small and fast moving target because of the attenuated small target echo caused by scan integration. In this paper, the conventional scan integration algorithm is analyzed in order to overcome the above problems, and then a simple and efficient scan correlation algorithm is proposed to remove the target trail. The proposed scan correlation algorithm uses the difference the current and the prior CFAR processed scan video. Compared to the conventional scan correlation algorithm, the proposed method is very simple and efficiently removes the target trail. The computer simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can extract a fast moving target without a target trail.