Rotor Blades Micro-Doppler Feature Analysis and Extraction of Small Unmanned Rotorcraft

Abstract

In this article, the micro-Doppler feature analysis and extraction of small unmanned rotorcraft (SUR) is considered. To be specific, the radar returns from the rotor blades are first modeled as sinusoidal frequency-modulated (SFM) signals. Then, the Gabor transform is utilized to obtain the time-frequency distribution (TFD). In order to solve the problem of limited TF analysis resolutions, high carrier frequency of radar is employed for the sake of separating different sinusoidal curves from TFD. After that, the Hough-Radon transform (HRT) is introduced to detect the sinusoidal curves from the TFD. Finally, based on the relationship between the SFM signal and the rotating blade, the micro-Doppler parameters which can reflect the threat level of the SUR to a large extend are estimated. Compared with other existing methods, the proposed method presents the relationships between the carrier frequency and the rotating blade parameters and it can be employed to extract the micro-Doppler feature of SUR with multiple rotor hubs. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed micro-Doppler feature extraction method.