In-plane and out-of-plane approximations for main lobe clutter in the presence of a passive radar

Main lobe clutter is the RF return, associated with illuminating a target, off of the sea surface or background into the main lobe of an observer’s antenna. This thesis derives a quick closed-form solution to approximate the RF return to an observer in the same vertical plane as the illuminator and target, and also, the RF return to an observer in a plane crossing that of the illuminator and target. When dealing with real-time considerations, it is necessary to use quick closed-form solutions to iterative problems. All test cases are verified using the Point-In-Flight (PIF) simulation at the Raytheon Bristol Facility. This simulation has been verified and accepted by the Applied Physics Laboratory/Johns Hopkins University (APL/JHU) as well as other well known community members. The key parameters for comparison are the peak returned power, Doppler, and the bandwidth in which the total returned power is to be spread. This thesis uses the comparison with the PIF simulation to determine the accuracy and limitations of the closed-form approximation.