Comprehensive measurement and modeling in foliage environments using UHF UWB ground-based radar

Abstract

The precise knowledge of the statistical properties of clutter plays a key role in radar target detection in foliage environments. Owing to a wealth of multiple scattering, the selection of an appropriate model for diverse foliage environments remains a conundrum. Thus the statistical modeling of the foliage clutter in different environments is focused on in this paper. In particular, the primary contribution is to characterize and parameterize the amplitude of the foliage clutter in three typical foliage environments of different densities, including line-of-sight (LOS) forest environment, non line-of-sight (NLOS) forest-penetration environment, and NLOS bush-penetration environment. Based on the real clutter data acquired with an ultra-high frequency (UHF) ultra-wideband (UWB) ground-based radar, the experimental results show that the specific foliage type and configuration has a significant impact on the distribution of foliage clutter. Furthermore, by means of Kullback–Leibler distance (KLD), log-logistic, ${\mathcal{G}}^0$ and $\mathcal{G}$ distributions with estimated parameters are demonstrated to be the best choice to model the clutter in the LOS forest environment, NLOS forest-penetration environment and NLOS bush-penetration environment, respectively. The proposed models are great advantages on understanding and prediction of the clutter in foliage environments.

Keywords:

• Electromagnetic wave transmission
• foliage clutter modeling
• parameter estimation
• ultra-high frequency (UHF)
• ultra-wideband (UWB) radar

ORCID

Pengzheng Lei http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9824-0595

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pengzheng Lei

Pengzheng Lei received the B.S. degree in communication engineering from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2007, the M.S. degree and the Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the National University of Defense Technology in 2009 and 2015, respectively. He is currently a lecture at the College of Meteorology and Oceanology in the National University of Defense Technology. His current research interests include multistatic radar/sonar systems, moving target detection and tracking, and parameter estimation.