The first maritime surveillance radars in World War II quickly discovered that returns from the sea, soon to be known as sea clutter, were often the limiting factor when attempting to detect small targets while controlling false alarms. This remains true for modern radars, where the detection of small, slow moving targets on a rough sea surface remains one of the main drivers for maritime radar design, particularly in the development of detection processing.

Sea Clutter: Scattering, the K Distribution and Radar Performance, 2nd Edition gives an authoritative account of our current understanding of radar sea clutter. Topics covered include the characteristics of radar sea clutter, modelling radar scattering by the ocean surface, statistical models of sea clutter, the simulation of clutter and other random processes, detection of small targets in sea clutter, imaging ocean surface features, radar detection performance calculations, CFAR detection, and the specification and measurement of radar performance. The calculation of the performance of practical radar systems is presented in sufficient detail for the reader to be able to tackle related problems with confidence. In this second edition the contents have been fully updated and reorganised to give better access to the different types of material in the book. Extensive new material has been added on the Doppler characteristics of sea clutter and detection processing; bistatic sea clutter measurements; electromagnetic scattering theory of littoral sea clutter and bistatic sea clutter; the use of models for predicting radar performance; and use of the K distribution in other fields.

This book provides an authoritative account of the current understanding of radar sea clutter, describing its phenomenology, EM scattering and statistical modelling and simulation, and their use in the design of detection systems and the calculation and practical evaluation of radar performance.