In this paper, a criterion for sea surface zoning based on the fractal characteristics of disturbances is demonstrated. To improve radar detection performance in heavy-tailed sea clutter, a multitude of sea clutter models and corresponding optimum and suboptimum detectors have been designed in recent years. However, there are cases where these models and detectors become insufficient to describe the coexistence of noise and sea clutter. The commonly used signal-to-clutter ratio (SCR) can hardly serve as an indicator revealing which kind of disturbances dominate in a certain area since it is difficult to decide the level of SCR at which sea clutter or noise exceeds the other. Therefore, it is necessary that a set of rules reflecting essential differences between sea clutter and noise are proposed to tell areas where sea clutter dominates, areas where sea clutter and noise coexist and areas where noise dominates. Analyzing fractal characteristics of disturbances, we consider the Hurst exponent H as a feature distinguishing sea clutter and noise from each other. A modified Sigmoid function is employed to model the variation in H with range bins, and the derivative of the function helps to formulate a set of rules for sea surface zoning.
Keywords: fractal characteristics; radar theory; sea surface zoning.