Efficient Chirp Parameters Estimation Based on the Ringing Effect With Application to the Velocity Estimation of Ground Moving Targets

Abstract

This paper presents an efficient algorithm for the estimation of the chirp parameters, including the chirp rate and centroid frequency. The estimation mechanism is based on the ringing effect, which undesirably occurs in multipath scenarios. However, the deliberate ringing effect can be exploited for the estimation of the chirp parameters. The salient feature of the proposed method is the low computational burden, which makes its realization feasible for real-time applications. Furthermore, the proposed chirp rate estimator can be employed in low signal-to-noise ratio scenarios. The application of the proposed method is for the synthetic aperture radar in which the Doppler rate and the Doppler centroid frequency of a moving target are efficiently estimated and its radial and along-track velocities are correspondingly calculated.