Radar Saturating Clutter Mitigation by Waveform Selection

A computer-implemented method in a radar system for optimizing radar performance of a transmission signal to detect a target against clutter by minimizing saturation while maintaining sensitivity, said target responding to said transmission signal as a scatterer said method comprising:

• establishing a sequence plurality of radar settings for the radar system to transmit based on expected size and speed of the target that responds to a radar, each radar setting including a power level for transmission power, a waveform duty cycle and a sensitivity reduction;
• determining non-saturation range probability fsat for said each radar setting from said sequence plurality with at least one scatterer presumed in the clutter, said non-saturation range probability denoting a portion of radar range unaffected by saturating clutter, said non-saturation range probability depending on said power level and said duty cycle for a corresponding radar setting;
• determining sensitivity probability fsens of the target detection for said each radar setting from said sequence plurality in response to said sensitivity reduction;
• calculating surveillance volume from multiplying said saturation range probability by said sensitivity probability as Vs=fsatfsens for each said radar setting as a corresponding plurality of surveillance volumes;
• identifying maximum surveillance volume in said plurality of surveillance volumes Vs and its associated maximum volume radar setting;
• selecting the transmission signal for maximum volume duty cycle and maximum volume power level that correspond to said maximum volume radar setting for radar operation by the radar system;
• and
• emitting the transmission signal with said maximum volume duty cycle and said maximum volume power level for said radar operation by the radar system.