Space-time clutter model for airborne bistatic radar with non-Gaussian statistics

To validate the potential space-time adaptive processing （STAP） algorithms for airborne bistatic radar clutter suppression under nonstationary and non-Gaussian clutter environments, a statistically non-Gaussian, space-time clutter model in varying bistatic geometrical scenarios is presented. The inclusive effects of the model contain the range dependency of bistatic clutter spectrum and clutter power variation in range-angle cells. To capture them, a new approach to coordinate system conversion is initiated into formulating bistatic geometrical model, and the bistatic non-Gaussian amplitude clutter representation method based on a compound model is introduced. The veracity of the geometrical model is validated by using the bistatic configuration parameters of multi-channel airborne radar measurement （MCARM） experiment. And simulation results manifest that the proposed model can accurately shape the space-time clutter spectrum tied up with specific airborne bistatic radar scenario and can characterize the heterogeneity of clutter amplitude distribution in practical clutter environments.

Measurements of ocean wave spectrum from airborne radar at small incidence angles

This paper proposes the retrieval method of ocean wave spectrum for airborne radar observations at small incidence angles, which is slightly modified from the method developed by Hauser. Firstly, it makes use of integration method to estimate total mean square slope instead of fitting method, which aims to reduce the affects of fluctuations superposed on normalized radar cross-section by integration. Secondly, for eliminating the noise spectrum contained in signal spectrum, the method considers the signal spectrum in certain look direction without any long wave components as the assumed noise spectrum, which would be subtracted from signal spectrum in any look direction for linear wave spectrum retrieval. Estimated v from the integration method are lower than the one from fitting method and have a standard deviation of 0.004 between them approximately. The assumed noise spectrum energy almost has no big variations along with the wave number and is slightly lower to the high wave number part of signal spectrum in any look direction, which follows that the assumption makes sense. The retrieved directional spectra are compared with the buoy records in terms of peak wavelength, peak direction and the significant wave height. Comparisons show that the retrieved peak wavelength and significant wave height are slightly higher than the buoy records but don＇t differs significantly （error less than 10%）. For peak direction, the swell waves in first case basically propagate in the wind direction 6 hours ago and the wind-generated waves in second case also propagate in the wind direction, but the 180° ambiguity remains. Results show that the modified method can carry out the retrieval of directional wave spectrum.

Adaptive coherence estimator based on the Krylov subspace technique for airborne radar

A novel adaptive detector for airborne radar space-time adaptive detection （STAD） in partially homogeneous environments is proposed. The novel detector combines the numerically stable Krylov subspace technique and diagonal loading technique, and it uses the framework of the adaptive coherence estimator （ACE）. It can effectively detect a target with low sample support. Compared with its natural competitors, the novel detector has higher proba- bility of detection （PD）, especially when the number of the training data is low. Moreover, it is shown to be practically constant false alarm rate （CFAR）.

SPACE-TIME ADAPTIVE PROCESSING FOR AIRBORNE RADAR:A CONVENIENT IMPLEMENTATION APPROACH

A convenient implementation approach to space-time adaptive processing for airborne radar has been proposed, which is added by some auxiliary array elements in the area of main-lobe clutter on the basis of 2-D Capon approach . It is of practical use for its small computational load. This approach possesses the ideal performance in the area of main-lobe clutter . In addition, the approach which is added by some auxiliary beams in the area of main-lobe clutter has also been discussed.

METHOD OF MULTI-TARGET TRACKING IN WIDE AREA SURVEILLANCE AIRBORNE RADAR SYSTEM BASING ON CLUSTERING ANALYSIS

This paper proposed a robust method based on the definition of Mahalanobis distance to track ground moving target. The feature and the geometry of airborne ground moving target tracking systems are studied at first. Based on this feature, the assignment relation of time-nearby target is calculated via Mahalanobis distance, and then the corresponding transformation formula is deduced. The simulation results show the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed method.

IMPROVED DOPPLER WARPING METHOD FOR AIRBORNE RADAR WITH NON-SIDELOOKING ARRAY

Traditional range-dependency compensation space time adaptive processing(STAP)methods usually involve aligning the clutter spectrums in a certain point to reduce the clutter non-homogeneity.A novel compensation STAP method is proposed as an improved Doppler warping(DW)method for airborne radar with non-sidelooking radar.This method facilitates DW method to bring clutter spectrum of different range gates together in the mainlobe and subsequently compensation to accomplish space angle of different range gates alignment at multiple Doppler bins.Simulation results show that the proposed method can further reduce the clutter non-homogeneity of non-sidelooking array and significantly outperform traditional algorithms with only a little increase of the computation load.

Study on Clutter Model and Characteristics of Airborne Radar with Parabolic Conformal Phased Array

The studies on clutter modeling and suppression of airborne radar with a parabolic conformal array are uncommon due to the complexity of this type of antenna array configuration.The correct understanding of clutter characteristics for airborne radar with a parabolic conformal antenna array is the prerequisite and foundation of optimal suppression of this type of clutter.This paper establishes the model of clutter echo of airborne parabolic conformal phased array radar and analyzes the structure characteristics and the distribution features of this type of clutter.The simulation results show that this type of clutter has the following characteristics：1） The main lobe on the azimuth is seriously broadened,2） the power spectrum presents strong heterogeneity,and 3） the freedom degrees are high.Based on the existing related clutter suppression methods,we verified the correctness of the constructed clutter model.This work has an important guidance to further study on clutter suppression methods in airborne parabolic conformal array radar.

An interference suppression algorithm for cognitive bistatic airborne radars

Interference suppression is a challenge for radar researchers, especially when mainlobe and sidelobe interference coexist. We present a comprehensive anti-interference approach based on a cognitive bistatic airborne radar. The risk of interception is reduced by lowering the launch energy of the radar transmitting terminal in the direction of interference;main lobe and sidelobe interferences are suppressed via cooperation between the two radars. The interference received by a single radar is extracted from the overall radar signal using multiple signal classification(MUSIC), and the interference is cross-located using two different azimuthal angles. Neural networks allowing good, non-linear nonparametric approximations are used to predict the location of interference, and this information is then used to preset the transmitting notch antenna to reduce the likelihood of interception. To simultaneously suppress mainlobe and sidelobe interferences, a blocking matrix is used to mask mainlobe interference based on azimuthal information, and an adaptive process is used to suppress sidelobe interference. Mainlobe interference is eliminated using the data received by the two radars. Simulation verifies the performance of the model.

Short-range clutter suppression method combining oblique projection and interpolation in airborne CFA radar

The airborne conformal array(CFA)radar's clutter ridges are range-modulated,which result in a bias in the estimation of the clutter covariance matrix(CCM)of the cell under test(CUT),further,reducing the clutter suppression performance of the airborne CFA radar.The clutter ridges can be effectively compensated by the space-time separation interpolation(STSINT)method,which costs less computation than the space-time interpolation(STINT)method,but the performance of interpolation algorithms is seriously affected by the short-range clutter,especially near the platform height.Location distributions of CFA are free,which yields serious impact that range spaces of steering vector matrices are non-orthogonal complement and even no longer disjoint.Further,a new method is proposed that the shortrange clutter is pre-processed by oblique projection with the intersected range spaces(OPIRS),and then clutter data after being pre-processed are compensated to the desired range bin through the STSINT method.The OPIRS also has good compatibility and can be used in combination with many existing methods.At the same time,oblique projectors of OPIRS can be obtained in advance,so the proposed method has almost the same computational load as the traditional compensation method.In addition,the proposed method can perform well when the channel error exists.Computer simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

An anti-main-lobe jamming algorithm for airborne early warning radar based on APC-SVRGD joint optimization

Main lobe jamming seriously affects the detection performance of airborne early warning radar.The joint processing of polarization-space has become an effective way to suppress the main lobe jamming.To avoid the main beam distortion and wave crest migration caused by the main lobe jamming in adaptive beamforming,a joint optimization algorithm based on adaptive polarization canceller(APC)and stochastic variance reduction gradient descent(SVRGD)is proposed.First,the polarization plane array structure and receiving signal model based on primary and auxiliary array cancellation are established,and an APC iterative algorithm model is constructed to calculate the optimal weight vector of the auxiliary channel.Second,based on the stochastic gradient descent principle,the variance reduction method is introduced to modify the gradient through internal and external iteration to reduce the variance of the stochastic gradient estimation,the airspace optimal weight vector is calculated and the equivalent weight vector is introduced to measure the beamforming effect.Third,by setting up a planar polarization array simulation scene,the performance of the algorithm against the interference of the main lobe and the side lobe is analyzed,and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified under the condition of short snapshot number and certain signal to interference plus noise ratio.

AIR GROUND RANGING OF AIRBORNE RADAR USING WAVELET TRANSFORM

A new method of air ground ranging of airborne radar based on wavelet transform was proposed. The wavelet domain noise excision was applied as a post processing tool to reduce the white Gaussian noise appearing in the radar echo. The wavelet approach overcomes the drawbacks of the traditional ranging method, thus considerably improving the accuracy and speed of air ground ranging. The whole algorithm was performed in frequency domain. It can take full advantage of the radar’s former hardware resource, such as FFT high speed processor. The simulation results demonstrate the validity of our new approach.

ON CLUTTER DOF FOR PHASED ARRAY AIRBORNE EARLY ARNING RADARS

In recent years,considerable attention has been paid to adaptive clutter suppressionfor airborne early warning(AEW)radars.A necessary condition for efficient clutter suppressionis that the number of adaptive degrees of freedom(DOF)is no less than that of clutter DOF.This paper analyzes the DOF of clutter for phased array AEW radars.The new results obtainedhere are helpful to design an adaptive system for clutter suppression.

A NEW METHOD TO COMPENSATE CLUTTER RANGE DEPENDENCE FOR FORWARD LOOKING AIRBORNE RADARS

The clutter direction-Doppler curves are not aligned on the near range bins for forward looking airborne radar. As a result, the performance of clutter suppression by Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) degrades greatly because of the clutter range dependence. To deal with this problem, a new compensated method is proposed in this paper. The method rebuilds the clutter covariance matrix based on spatial high resolution Minimum Variance Distortionless Response (MVDR) spectrum, and then finds a matrix to transform the covariance matrix of short-range gate to the referred far-range gate. The method can compensate the clutter range dependence well. The simulation results show validity of the method.

AN APPROACH TO SUPPRESS SHORT-RANGE CLUTTER FOR NON-SIDE LOOKING AIRBORNE RADAR

When the Airborne Early Warning(AEW) radar transmits medial or high Pulse Repetitive Frequency(PRF) signal,the range ambiguity occurs.The clutter of short-range clutter has serious range dependence problem for non-Side Looking Airborne Radar(non-SLAR).As a result,the clutter plus noise covariance matrix can not be estimated correctly,and the performance of clutter suppression obtained by Space-Time Adaptive Processing(STAP) degrades greatly.The uniform linear array has not elevation degrees;therefore,the short-range clutter can not be suppressed directly.A short-range clutter suppression method is proposed.The method first estimate the elevation angles of the ambiguous short-range gate,then eliminates short-range clutter by space time interpolation and adds moving target protection in the procedure.This method can suppress the short-range clutter well.Simulation results show the validity of the method.

METHOD FOR ALONG-TRACK DUAL-ANTENNA AIRBORNE RADAR'S GMTI WHEN THE ATENNA ERROR CHANGES PULSE TO PULSE

This paper presents a joint method of Doppler Beam Sharpen (DBS) imaging and Signal Subspace Processing (SSP) to achieve Ground Moving Target Indication(GMTI) for along- track dual-antenna airborne radar. When the error of the two antennas (also refers to channels) changes pulse to pulse, the method SSP is used to precisely calibrate the two antennas’ DBS images, then to detect the ground moving targets in the difference image of the two calibrated images. The method DBS-SSP is proved to offer performance improvement on the actually measured data and simulated data.

Assessment Model of Atmosphere Transmitting Influence on High-resolution Airborne SAR Stereo Positioning

The influence derived from atmosphere transmitting of radar wave, in the application of high-resolution airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) stereo positioning, may produce some phase errors, and eventually be introduced into positioning model. This paper described the principle of airborne SAR stereo positioning and the error sources of stereo positioning accuracy that arose from atmosphere transmitting, established a corresponding assess- ment model of atmosphere transmitting influence, and testified the model and the assessment principle taking the 1-m resolution airborne SAR images of Zigong City, Sichuan Province in China, as the test dataset. The test result has proved that the assessment model is reliable and reasonable. And, it has shown that the phase error arisen from time delay is the main error source during the atmosphere transmitting, which has much more influences on cross-track di- rection and introduces a stereo positioning error of about eight meters, but less on the along-track direction.

IMPROVED CALIBRATION METHOD FOR AIRBORNE ATI-SAR BASELINE

Airborne Along-Track Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (ATI-SAR) baseline error is a main error resource affecting the precision of velocity measurement of moving objects and therefore should be calibrated externally. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has proposed a calibration scheme for tasks of PacRim98 and PacRim2000 based on several static objects on the ground. In this paper, the influence of phase center uncertainty on baseline determination by using PacRim method proposed by JPL is analyzed. According to the analysis, the phase center uncertainty can cause a constant part of error to the result of baseline calibration. In order to deal with this problem, an improved calibration method on the basis of sensitivity equations and some ground moving targets, whose velocities are already known, is proposed in this paper. The simulation results show that our proposed calibration method has improved the accuracy of baseline calibration and has obviously prohibited the effect of antennas' phase center uncertainty.

CROSS-TRACK THREE APERTURES MILLIMETER WAVE SAR SIDE-LOOKING THREE-DIMENSIONAL IMAGING

The airborne cross-track three apertures MilliMeter Wave (MMW) Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) side-looking three-Dimensional (3D) imaging is investigated in this paper. Three apertures are distributed along the cross-track direction, and three virtual phase centers will be obtained through one-input and three-output. These three virtual phase centers form a sparse array which can be used to obtain the cross-track resolution. Because the cross-track array is short, the cross-track resolution is low. When the system works in side-looking mode, the cross-track resolution and height resolution will be coupling, and the low cross-track resolution will partly be transformed into the height uncertainty. The beam pattern of the real aperture is used as a weight to improve the Peak to SideLobe Ratio (PSLR) and Integrated SideLobe Ratio (ISLR) of the cross-track sparse array. In order to suppress the high cross-track sidelobes, a weighting preprocessing method is proposed. The 3D images of a point target and a simulation scene are achieved to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. And the imaging result of the real data obtained by the cross-track three-baseline MMW InSAR prototype is presented as a beneficial attempt.

BACKSIDE EFFECT OF BISTATIC AIRBORNE CLUTTER CHARACTERISTICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS IN GMTI

An interesting clutter characteristic of bistatic radars is presented, which is named as backside effect. In such an effect, the range-dependent ground clutter spectrum can be easily aligned, and Space-Time Adaptive Processing (STAP) is to be more applicable and effective for the Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI) in bistatic systems. The backside effect is proved by the numerical calculation method and explained in point of the geometry. At last a new spectrum aligning method is induced, i.e., ADC and Rotation (ADCR), which can gain a further performance improvement on GMTI.

基于遗传算法的机载中重频高效多维优化

机载脉冲多普勒(PD)雷达的重频组设计是雷达总体设计的基础,直接影响雷达的性能和应用场景。在中重频组设计过程中,必须考虑多维度参数的优化,由于可调整参数多,会导致潜在组合数膨胀严重,对计算资源和时间提出了极大的挑战。传统的优化方法,即便在限定参数范围后,仍面临穷举组合数庞大的问题。此外,机载雷达系统设计周期通常较短,模式需求多变,需要在较短时间内完成方案前期参数的选择和初步优化,便于开展后续设计。本文提出了一种基于遗传算法的高效多维优化方法,不仅增加了优化维度以更好满足工程需求,同时显著提升了优化效率。通过应用实例验证了所提方法的有效性,对机载PD雷达总体设计论证具有重要价值。