Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine March 2018 - 30

Target Monitoring Using Small-Aperture Compact High-Frequency Surface Wave Radar

Figure 17.

Figure 18.

ations in range are within 0.5 km. The distance between the points
detected using eight channels and AIS is less than 1 km, while the
points detected using three channels are far from the synchronized
AIS. The maximum distance reaches 3.5 km because of about 2°
of deviation in azimuth. So, the track monitored using compact
HFSWR has a large spatial localization error.
After integration of detection and tracking for compact HFSWR, some false targets, which have similar features to real targets,
appear in the tracking results because of clutter or noise. Figure 17
shows the R-T images at different Doppler bins of false targets
caused by ionosphere clutter. Figure 18 shows the D-T at different
range bins. Some strips appear, but they are not real target tracks,
because one real target cannot have different velocities and ranges at the same time. Moreover, the stripes indicate that the target
range was not steadily increasing or decreasing, unlike the real
targets shown in Figure 5. This difference allows false targets to
be distinguished from true targets, based on the distribution characteristic analysis of the position and the signal intensity over time.

Compact HFSWR is suitable for medium-range target tracking
(within approximately 100 km). Even if more distant targets can be
tracked, the track would have a large spatial localization error. To
improve tracking performance of compact HFSWR, fusion of results from multistation network observations is a promising potential solution. Future research will focus on parameter optimization,
track filtering, false target elimination, and association and fusion
of multistation compact HFSWR.

R-T at different Doppler bins of false targets caused by ionospheric
clutter. (a) At 108 Doppler bin. (b) At 205 Doppler bin.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project is sponsored by National Key R&D Program of China
(No. 2017YFC1405202), National Marine Technology Program
for Public Welfare (No. 201505002) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61671166). The authors thank the
anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions that have
helped to improve the quality and the readability of this article.

REFERENCES

CONCLUSION

[1]

To investigate the potential of compact HFSWR for vessel monitoring, the characteristic of the area target in the R-D image was
analyzed, and the integrated detection and tracking method was
proposed to monitor moving targets using compact HFSWR. The
proposed method was validated with measurement HFSWR data
and synchronous in situ AIS data. The tracking performance of
a three-channel compact HFSWR was compared with that of an
eight-channel radar system. The results show that compact HFSWR can be used to detect and track moving targets.
30

D-T at different gate bins of false targets caused by ionospheric clutter.
(a) At 156 gate bin. (b) At 151 gate bin.

[2]

[3]

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

Ponsford, A. M. Surveillance of the 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) using high frequency surface wave radar (HFSWR). Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing, Special Issue on Ship
Detection in Coastal Waters, Vol. 27, 4 (2001), 354-360.
Dzvonkovskaya, A., Gurgel, K. W., Rohling, H., and Schlick, T. Low
power high frequency surface wave radar application for ship detection
and tracking. IEEE International Conference on Radar, 2008, 627-632.
Vivone, G., Braca, P., and Horstmann, J. Knowledge-based multitarget
ship tracking for HF surface wave radar systems. IEEE Transactions
on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol. 53, 7 (2015), 3931-3949.

MARCH 2018

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine March 2018