High-latitude over-the-horizon radar applications

Abstract

Over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) systems that operate at high-latitudes often must contend with multipath and pronounced diffusive scattering effects produced by the anisotropic, birefringent, and heterogeneous nature of the ionosphere. In this thesis, radar performance at high-latitudes is quantified and several applications for either mitigating the deleterious effects of multipath and diffusive scattering or deriving information about the state of the ionosphere are proposed. The first application is inspired by adaptive optics techniques in other fields and involves the coherent summation of the received plane wave spectrum in order to improve angular resolution and array gain. The second application involves deriving ionospheric E x B drift from applying spatial correlation analysis to ground clutter echoes. The third application is the development of a new spatial adaptive processing technique designed specifically to preserve the Doppler spectrum of angle-Doppler coupled clutter like that observed at high-latitudes.