Innovative Multi-Target Estimating with Clutter-Suppression Technique for Pulsed Radar Systems

Sensors (Basel). 2020 Apr 25;20(9):2446. doi: 10.3390/s20092446.

Abstract

Linear frequency modulation (LFM) waveforms have high Doppler-shift endurance because of the relative wide modulation bandwidth to the Doppler variation. The Doppler shift of the moving objects, nevertheless, constantly introduces obscure detection range offsets despite the exceptional Doppler tolerance in detection energy loss from LFM. An up-down-chirped LFM waveform is an efficient scheme to resolve the true target location and velocity by averaging the detection offset of two detection pairs from each single chirp LFM in opposite slopes. However, in multiple velocity-vary-target scenarios, without an efficient grouping scheme to find the detection pair of each moving target, the ambiguous detection results confine the applicability of precise target estimation by using these Doppler-tolerated waveforms. A succinct, three-multi-Doppler-shift-compensation (MDSC) scheme is applied to resolve the range and velocity of two moving objects by sorting the correct LFM detection pair of each target, even though the unresolvable scenarios of two close-by targets imply a fatal disability of detecting objects under a cluttered background. An innovative clutter-suppressed multi-Doppler-shift compensation (CS-MDSC) scheme is introduced in this research to compensate for the critical insufficient of resolving two overlapping objects with different velocities by solely MDSC. The CS-MDSC has been shown to successfully overcome this ambiguous scenario by integrating Doppler-selective moving target indication (MTI) filters to mitigate the distorting of near-zero-Doppler objects.

Keywords: Doppler shift compensation; Pulse-Doppler radar; clutter suppression; comb filter; linear frequency modulation; matched filter; moving target indication; pulse compression.