Chaotic dynamics of ionospheric clutter from high frequency surface wave radar

The detection performance of high frequency surface wave radar is impacted by the ionospheric clutter. In order to suppress the ionospheric clutter, it is important to research the physical mechanism of ionosphere. In this paper, it is demonstrated, convincingly for the first time, the chaotic dynamics of the ionospheric clutter. The results are obtained using the actual data collected from a series of experiments in Weihai Radar Station, China. The study includes the stationarity and nonlinearity test, phase-space reconstruction, correlation dimension analysis and Lyapunov exponents analysis. And finally, it is found that ionospheric clutter in HFSWR is a chaotic dynamical process with relatively few degrees of freedom, in contrast to the stochastic approach where the ionospheric clutter is viewed as a random process with a large number of degrees of freedom[1]. Also, this new approach will further provide an original way to analyse the ionospheric clutter suppression method.