Effects of Sea Clutter on Atmospheric Refractivity Estimation

This paper addresses the effects of sea clutter on the clutter-based atmospheric refractivity estimation techniques. It provides a mean square error (MSE) metric for refractivity estimators based on the available clutter-to-noise (CNR) ratio, the type of the sea clutter statistics (Rayleigh, K-distributed and log-normal) and the parameters forming these probability density functions (pdf) such as spikiness and mean-to-median ratios. It includes a discussion about the selection of appropriate statistics for refractivity estimation with very low grazing angles and low resolutions. The performance of an evaporation duct height estimator is provided as an example.