Joint adaptive waveform design and direction-of-arrival tracking

Abstract

The ability to adapt waveforms to the changing properties of targets is a very important feature for radars. Adaptive waveform design can improve the estimation and tracking of targets dramatically. In this paper we propose a joint scheme for adaptive multiple waveforms design and multi-target parameter estimation and tracking for extended targets. We combine our previous work on information theoretic waveform design for multiple extended targets with an iterative joint direction-of-arrival and target frequency response estimation. The results can improve wide band high range resolution (HRR) applications. The method is computationally attractive, since the waveform design stage involves convex optimization. The performance gains of the adaptive design process are demonstrated in simulations. The proposed algorithm shows benefits of 2-3 dB compared to flat spectrum waveform in terms of received SNR, and yields better resolution capability due to the adaptive waveform design.