Multipath Suppression for Continuous Wave Radar via Slepian Sequences

Abstract

In continuous wave (CW) radar systems, multiple signal copies impinge the receiver simultaneously. Often, undesired multipath and direct-path copies are many times stronger than potential targets. When applying matched filter signal processing techniques, the undesired signal components can mask weaker targets and decrease performance of post-processing techniques, such as target indication or estimation. In this manuscript, we propose a method of rejecting multipath-scattered returns over a continuous region in range and Doppler. We explore the computational cost of this method and additionally propose an approximate method of rejection which leverages the well-known discrete prolate spheroidal sequences (DPSS)–typically referred to as Slepian sequences–to gain a computational advantage. Results are shown to decrease the effective noise floor when applying matched filtering techniques as well as increase target signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) outside of an undesired multipath region. Comparisons are shown to traditional CW multipath removal in terms of rejection performance and run-time.