Transmit-Receive Design for Non-Uniform Pulse Repetition Interval Airborne Radar in the Presence of Signal-Dependent Clutter

Abstract

This paper deals with the joint design of transmit waveform and receive filter to improve the clutter rejection capability for non-uniform pulse repetition interval (NUPRI) airborne radar. Specifically, a multipulse echo model accounting for a moving point-like target and signal-dependent clutter is first established. Then the echo is processed via the matching filter and the windowed Doppler filter bank to obtain the two-dimensional range-Doppler plane. Further, the integrated sidelobe level of clutter (ISLC) that spreads the region of the target of interest in the plane is considered to minimize forcing constant modulus constraint on the waveform. To solve the resultant nonconvex problem, the Sequential Greedy Optimization Algorithm (SGOA) through alternately updating the receive filter and transmit waveform is proposed to monotonically decrease ISLC to converge. In each iteration, the iterative algorithm based on coordinate descent (CD) framework and the sequential convex approximation algorithm are, respectively, explored to obtain the transmit waveform and receive filter. Finally, the performance of the proposed algorithm is assessed through numerical simulations showing its capability to suppress signal-dependent clutter.