Date of Award

3-2006

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Department

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

First Advisor

Todd B. Hale, PhD

Abstract

In the outdoor measurement facility, a certain amount of real estate is owned by the organization, and therefore can be groomed to keep clutter contributions to a minimum. As the transmit signal travels further down range, however, returns from long-range clutter sources are inevitable and can have a significant impact on measurement accuracy. This research effort investigates the effectiveness of employing nonlinear suppression (NLS) to abate long-range ambiguous clutter in these facilities. Initial testing provides an extended proof-of-concept for coincident point scatterers representing target and clutter sources. The NLS process is finally applied to simulated measured data from the National Radar Test Facility (NRTF), where five cases representing various target versus clutter signal power ratios are tested. Ratios are selected to cover the range of clutter signals having 0.25 times the power to 4 times the power of the target signal. Results show promise for employing NLS in this arena, as one of the techniques studied retained on average 95 percent of the target signal power while discarding 78 percent of the ambiguous signal power.

AFIT Designator

AFIT-GE-ENG-06-06

DTIC Accession Number

ADA451127

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