A study on high‐resolution target height estimation in multipath environment—subarray configuration

Abstract

AbstractIt is well known that a large spike error and a bias error occur in the monopulse angle measurement process (of height estimation due to sea surface reflection or road surface reflection) when height estimation of a low‐altitude target is carried out with an air traffic control radar or a tracking radar with a monopulse antenna. In this paper, a target height estimation method is proposed that can seek the estimation object with only one parameter of the target height, even if fading prevention by frequency hopping and a subarray configuration of the array antenna based on the maximum likelihood estimation method is used. By means of computer simulation, the S/N dependence and equivalent earth radius error dependence of the target height estimation error are evaluated when the conventional ΣΔ monopulse method, the maximum likelihood estimation method without frequency hopping for four subarrays, and the proposed maximum likelihood estimation method with frequency hopping are used. Even though the evaluation is within the limited conditions, it is confirmed that the proposed method can estimate the target height while fading prevention is attempted in a multipath environment. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 87(11): 39–48, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.10208