Rain clutter

Precipitation appears on the radar screen as lots of small echoes which continuously change size, intensity and position — this is known as clutter. The clutter can sometimes appear as large hazy areas, depending on the intensity of the rainfall. The clutter reduces the radar’s target detection performance.

Rain clutterThe level of reduction in target detection performance is dependent on radar antenna characteristics, transmission frequency and pulse length.

A shorter transmission pulse provides better detection.

The Rain anti-clutter control helps to improve target detection by reducing the impact of precipitation on the radar screen. However, solid targets such as land masses will appear thinner.

When the Rain anti clutter control is set to Auto, target detection is optimized and a short pulse for conventional magnetron transmitters is selected to provide best performance.

The Raymarine Pathfinder radar features a high discrimination on all range scales, maintaining a higher detection performance in all rain clutter conditions.