Multichannel GMTI techniques to enhance integration of temporal signal energy for improved target detection

• Published in: IET radar, sonar & navigation Vol. 11; no. 3; pp. 395 - 403
• Main Authors: Paulus, Audrey S, Melvin, William L, Williams, Douglas B
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Institution of Engineering and Technology 01.03.2017
• Subjects: Algorithms; Alternative energy sources; alternative pre‐Doppler temporal weighting method; aperture constraints; Doppler radar; Dwell; EDTP algorithm; Energy distribution; extended dwell temporal processing; frequency domain analysis; interference (signal); linear prediction; multichannel GMTI techniques; noise energy; Platforms; power constrained platform; power constraints; pre‐Doppler space‐time adaptive processing; Radar; radar signal processing; radar target recognition; received signal; Research Article; signal detection; signal energy; Signal processing; signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio; SINR; small radar platform; STAP; Target detection; temporal integration; temporal processing methods; temporal signal energy; wireless channels; power constraints; radar signal processing; pre-Doppler space-time adaptive processing; radar target recognition; received signal; signal energy; signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio; wireless channels; EDTP algorithm; multichannel GMTI techniques; small radar platform; noise energy; signal detection; alternative pre-Doppler temporal weighting method; power constrained platform; temporal processing methods; interference (signal); extended dwell temporal processing; frequency domain analysis; temporal signal energy; target detection; aperture constraints; STAP; temporal integration; Doppler radar; SINR; linear prediction
• ISSN: 1751-8784; 1751-8792; 1751-8792
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2016.0082

Improvements in target detection are typically achieved by increasing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the received signal. For a small radar platform with power and aperture constraints, increases in SINR must come through temporal integration. Two techniques are presented here for enhancing the integration of temporal signal energy to improve detection of weak, slow-moving targets over conventional methods. Both techniques involve modifications to pre-Doppler space-time adaptive processing (STAP), a reduced-dimension STAP method that is implementable in real-time on a power-constrained platform. The two modifications include (i) development of an alternative pre-Doppler temporal weighting method, based on linear prediction, to increase the SINR of the pre-Doppler temporal output signal and (ii) development of an extended dwell temporal processing (EDTP) algorithm to integrate temporal signal energy collected over a long dwell. The EDTP algorithm is based on frequency domain analysis of the extended dwell time signal; the detection decision exploits the differences in the distribution of signal energy and noise energy over an extended dwell. EDTP algorithm performance is superior to traditional temporal processing methods in many practical scenarios: the EDTP algorithm detection rate is three times the detection rate of non-coherent integration for very low-velocity, low-SNR targets.