Extraction of radio frequency interference based on image segmentation for high-frequency radar

High frequency radars need to suppress the radio frequency interference (RFI), where suppression performances are constrained by RFI samples. To obtain the RFI samples from the received data or the range-Doppler (RD) map, a novel approach is proposed to extract the RFI regions in the RD map based on image segmentation methods. By transforming the RD map into a gray image, algorithms of sea-clutter mitigation, edge detection, segments and lines detection are developed, to extract the RFI edges and regions. Thus, the recovered RFI data can be used to estimate the RFI properties accurately and improve the suppression performances. Practical experiences show that the proposed approach can detect the RFI line successfully even when 75% of it is covered by sea-clutter. To demonstrate its application, the proposed algorithms is also applied in receive filter design which can suppress the RFI effectively. © 2018, Editorial Office of Systems Engineering and Electronics. All right reserved.