Target Detection of Primary Surveillance Radar in Wind Farm Clutter

In recent years, the global wind power installed capacity is growing exponentially. However, current Moving Target Detector (MTD) of primary surveillance radar can not suppress the wind farm clutter. The non-zero frequency components of the wind farm clutter may produce target losing and higher false alarm. A novel method for radar target detection in wind farm clutter is proposed. The method sets a wind farm clutter suppressor before current MTD. First, the center Doppler frequency of each range cell is estimated and the spectral center of each range cell is shifted to the zero frequency. Then, target echo is removed with the method similar to canceling stationary clutter. The wind farm clutter with rather wide spectral width still reserves most of energy after canceller process. Finally, the clutter units detected by Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) are eliminated. The proposed method prevented the obvious deterioration of current MTD detection due to clutter energy spreading into non-zero Doppler filters. The experimental results indicate that the method conqueres the problem of masked target and decreased false alarms effectively are not sensitive to the power of the wind farm clutter.