Ray tracing/correlation approach to estimation of surface-based duct parameters from radar clutter

This paper describes a technique to estimate surface-basedduct parameters by using a simple ray tracing/correlation method.The approach is novel in that it incorporates the Spearman rank-ordercorrelation scheme between the observed surface clutter and thesurface ray density for a given propagation path. The simulationresults and the real data results both demonstrate the ability ofthis method to estimate surface-based duct parameters. Compared withthe results obtained by a modified genetic algorithm combined with theparabolic wave equation, the results retrieved from the raytracing/correlation scheme show a minor reduction in accuracy but agreat improvement on computation time. Therefore the raytracing/correlation method might be used as a precursor to moresophisticated and slower techniques, such as genetic algorithm andparticle filters, by narrowing the parameter search space andproviding a comprehensive and more efficient estimation algorithm.