Designing single/multiple sparse frequency waveforms with sidelobe constraint

Abstract

Sparse frequency waveform with narrow stopbands sparsely distributed over a wide spectrum band is preferred for many radar and communication systems operating in a highly congested spectrum environment. In this paper, a new method for designing sparse frequency waveform with low range side lobes are proposed. The basic idea is to achieve waveform total performance improvement by minimising a new effective penalty function based on both requirements for the power spectrum density and the range side lobe through an iterative algorithm. The proposed approach is efficient in computation and flexible in designing sparse frequency waveform. Several design examples are also presented to show the validity of the proposed method. An extension to design multiple waveforms for multiple-input multiple-output radar is also presented.