Implications of Diversified Doppler for Random PRI Radar

Abstract

This paper seeks to expand the fundamental understanding of random pulse repetition interval (PRI) staggering radar by formulating a physically meaningful “Doppler manifold” signal model that incorporates slow-time coding and is examined in the context of monostatic, multiple-time-around (MTA) scattering, and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configurations. In so doing, it is found that an intrinsic “range decoherence” effect arises for the MTA and MIMO cases, thereby expanding the means through which separability can be achieved, albeit with rather different degrees of “decoherence amplification”. Moreover, a closed-form solution for the average Doppler response due to random staggering is derived, yielding guidance on the degree necessary to suppress Doppler ambiguities.