Reduction of sidelobe self-interference in an agile beam radar

Abstract

In an agile beam phased array radar, the beam is often multiplexed over several angular positions, and "listens" in each position only over an instrumented range that may be a fraction of the unambiguous range as determined by the pulse repetition period in each position. After transmitting a pulse in a given direction, the beam is switched, essentially instantaneously, to another position, after the instrumented range delay. In this second position, echoes from the first position, from multiple trips of the instrumented range, enter the one-way angular sidelobes of the first position. This interference is compounded if there are several beam positions in a pulse repetition period. The author proposes a method of phase coding the pulses in such a way that the pulse-to-pulse phase variation in each direction is orthogonal to every other phase code in the other directions. The codes are Walsh functions. These are sets of binary valued (+1 or -1) functions such that all of the functions in the set are mutually orthogonal. Not every possible number N of pulses in each direction and number K of beam positions can be accommodated, but a large variety of such combinations can be accommodated. Several examples are given. The combination of low one-way sidelobes and orthogonality (or near orthogonality) of the phase codes should provide for very stringent sidelobe self interference rejection.