Analysis of S-band Passive Bistatic Sea Clutter

Understanding the characteristics of sea clutter is essential to develop effective and robust detection schemes, evaluate radar detection performance and to generate realistic simulated data. There has been a significant amount of study into the statistics of monostatic and to a lesser extent active bistatic sea clutter. In this paper, we look at passive bistatic sea clutter using the space-borne Sirius XM S-band satellite as an illuminator of opportunity. The data was collected in a high sea state and from a number of bistatic angles. The characterization includes the amplitude statistics, temporal correlation and the evolving Doppler spectrum model.