Space-Time Coding Technique for Coherent Frequency Diverse Array

Abstract

Coherent frequency diverse array (FDA) radar is able to cover all directions with a stable gain by transmitting a single frequency-shifted waveform. However, it is revealed in this work that the range resolution scales linearly with the number of elements, which is limited by the fixed element number. By leveraging the relationship between the beam direction and the signal frequency, we link the sub-bands of the emitted signal to angular sectors. Based on the fact, a novel transmit diversity technique, referred to as two-dimensional (2-D) space-time coding (STC), is proposed to improve the range resolution. For a specific observation direction, the frequency band of each pulse is shifted by STC to synthesize a full bandwidth after the pulse accumulation. Furthermore, the piecewise LFM (linear frequency modulation) waveform design can be combined with the STC technique to synthesize the transmit beampattern flexibly without range resolution degradation for each pulse. Compared with the state-of-the-art technologies, the proposed STC technique has superiorities in range resolution improvement, ultra-low range sidelobe level, interference suppression, and beampattern design capability. In addition, multi-dimensional ambiguity functions are derived to assess the performance in range-angle-Doppler domain, including the range and angle resolutions, the sidelobe level (SLL) and the angular coverage. To satisfy practical demands, the general receive processing procedures are also designed. The proposed method and corresponding theoretical analysis are verified by extensive numerical results.