Design And Implementation Of Airborne Radar Clutter Simulator

With the requirement of new function of radars, more and more new kind of radars have been developed. Therefore, powerful radar signal simulators were urgently needed. When a radar is sending signal, there are a lot of echo has nothing to do with the target object, which is referred to as clutter. Clutter simulation can not only help examining the working of radars, but also conducive to improve radar performance. Due to the motion platform, the clutter of the airborne radar is so complex that needs to be specially researched. As an important part of the simulator, the performance of the radar clutter simulator directly affects the testing of radars.The simulation of the radar echo including target, noise and clutter. Relative to the target and noise, the power spectrum density(PSD) and amplitude probability distribution function(PDF) of clutter is much more complex. So this article start from analyzing the radar clutter amplitude probability distribution(Rayleigh, Log-Normal, Weibull and K) and power spectrum density(gaussian, exponent and all-pole model) under general situation, also comparing the two kinds of commonly used radar clutter simulation method(ZMNL and SIRP).Then studied the airborne clutter power spectrum density and done the mathematical modeling of it, and raised a simplified model for project implementation, and done the simulation and analysis of the two models, then introduced the method and steps for generating the noise data by using the simplified model. Finally designed the system and the hardware modules of the airborne radar clutter simulator, and completed the test of the hardware modules.The simplified model of clutter power spectrum can reduce the time cost of calculating clutter power spectrum with accurately reflecting the characteristics of airborne radar clutter. And the design of the clutter signal hardware producing solution successfully solved the problem between real-time computing solution and data storage solution, finally achieved the goal of generating clutter data efficiently and accurately.