Tracking atmospheric ducts using radar clutter: evaporation duct tracking using kalman filters

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of tracking evaporation ducts in marine environments. The method tracks the evolution of the range and height-dependent index of refraction using the radar sea clutter. A split-step fast Fourier transform (FFT) based parabolic equation (PE) approximation to the wave equation is used to compute the clutter return in complex environments with varying index of refraction. Tracking is obtained using an extended Kalman filter (EKF).