Over the Horizon Sky-wave Radar: Coordinate Registration by Sea-land Transitions Identification

In this paper, we propose an approach to the problem of real time coordinate registration for Over the Horizon Sky Wave signals. The approach is based on the a priori knowledge of the displacement of the sea-land transitions within the radar coverage area, namely, takes advantage of the geo-morphological structure of the surveillance area, employing it to build a binary mask to be used as a geographic reference for the received radar echo. The georeferencing algorithm, based on the maximization of the cross-correlation between the received radar echo and the binary clutter signatures, is outlined in order to point out the minimum requirements in terms of received signal-to-noise ratio and differential sea-land backscattering coefficient.