Ionospheric Clutter Suppression with an Auxiliary Crossed-Loop Antenna in a High-Frequency Radar for Sea Surface Remote Sensing

Ionospheric clutter is one of the main problems for high-frequency surface wave radars (HFSWRs), as it severely interferes with sea surface state monitoring and target detection. Although a number of methods exist for ionospheric clutter suppression, most are suitable for radars with a large-sized array and are inefficient for small-aperture radars. In this study, we added an auxiliary crossed-loop antenna to the original compact radar antenna, and used an adaptive filter to suppress the ionospheric clutter. The experimental results of the HFSWRs data indicated that the suppression factor of the ionospheric clutter was up to 20 dB. Therefore, the Bragg peaks that were originally submerged by the ionospheric clutters could be recovered, and the gaps in the current maps can, to a large extent, be filled. For an oceanographic radar, the purpose of suppressing ionospheric clutter is to extract an accurate current speed; the radial current fields that were generated by our method showed an acceptable agreement with those generated by GlobCurrent data. This result supports the notion that the ionospheric suppression technique does not compromise the estimation of radial currents. The proposed method is particularly efficient for a compact HFSWRs, and can also be easily used in other types of antennas.