Moving-in-pulse duration model-based target integration method for HSV-borne high-resolution radar

Abstract

Hypersonic vehicles (HSVs) offer great advantages over airplanes and satellites, owing to their hypersonic speeds and flexible trajectories. However, HSV-borne radar may suffer from performance degradation if traditional target integration methods with stop-and-go (SAG) approximation are applied; this is especially true for high resolution radar and applications that utilize long-time coherent integration. In this paper, we consider the effects of moving-in-pulse duration (MPD) to derive an HSV-borne radar signal model without SAG approximation by specifically characterizing platform motion during the transmission and reception of a pulse. An explicit formula for wavenumber domain echo is derived using the 2-D joint stationary phase method. To mitigate the pulse-dependent echo distortion induced by the MPD effect, a target integration method based on the omega-K algorithm is proposed; this method employs revised filters for bulk focusing and revised Stolt interpolation for differential focusing to improve the overall focusing quality. The paper discusses the ambiguity functions of in-range MPD echo models, and describes the performance metrics for the integration results in both dimensions, including impulse response width (IRW), peak sidelobe ratio (PSLR), and integrated sidelobe ratio (ISLR). Simulation results have verified the effectiveness of the proposed method in MPD circumstances.