Abstract
Currently, X-band marine radar images are commonly utilized to retrieve sea wave parameters. However, the marine radar image usually contains rainfall interference noise, which has an effect on the inversion accuracy of the wave parameters. To control the quality of the radar image when retrieving sea wave parameters, research on rainfall detection is investigated in this paper. Based on the correlation characteristics of the sea clutter and the difference in the correlation coefficients between sea wave images with and without rain, a novel method of rainfall detection is proposed. By analyzing the spatial and temporal correlation characteristics of sea clutter, the detection threshold of the proposed method is determined. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, X-band marine radar data collected at Pingtan, which is located on the coast of the East China Sea, are utilized in this paper. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively detect rainfall from X-band marine radar images.
Highlights
Since X-band marine radar has the characteristics of high resolution, convenience, and low cost, it is commonly utilized for ship navigation
To control the radar image quality and improve the retrieving accuracy of the sea wave parameters, a method of rainfall detection by using the difference in the correlation characteristics between a radar image contaminated by rain and an image in the absence of rain is proposed in this paper
By deeply investigating the correlation coefficient of the X-band radar image, we found that the correlation coefficient of sea clutter is greater than 1/e when the separation in the azimuth direction is less than the horizontal beam width
Summary
Since X-band marine radar has the characteristics of high resolution, convenience, and low cost, it is commonly utilized for ship navigation. To control the radar image quality and improve the retrieving accuracy of the sea wave parameters, a method of rainfall detection by using the difference in the correlation characteristics between a radar image contaminated by rain and an image in the absence of rain is proposed in this paper. Since the proposed method for rainfall detection is based on the sea clutter correlation characteristics, the radar images without a wave signature should be discarded. Where mean(·) denotes the mean value of the selected analysis area, Tn denotes the detection threshold for the thermal noise, C0 denotes the case where the acquired radar image has a high echo intensity, and C1 denotes the case where the selected radar image is acquired under low sea conditions and is considered as black without wave signature. The radar image is discarded for rainfall detection, when the mean of the backscatter echo intensity of the analysis area is less than the threshold
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
