A programmable radar clutter simulator based on maximum entropy spectral estimation principle

This paper analyzes the origin and features of radar clutter echoes, and indicates that the parametric spectral estimation method is more effective in setting up clutter models and more convenient in simulating clutter process than the classical periodogram method. A widely used kind of parametric spectral estimation method, the maximum entropy method (MEM), is adopted to estimation clutter sequences with defined or undefined models, and then the parameters obtained by the MEM are used as the regressive coefficients of an autoregressive filter, which is used to simulate the desired clutter process. The various steady and unsteady clutter process can be simulated with this simulator. It can be therefore used to test the properties of MTI, DMTI, ADMTI, and MTD.