Analog beamspace super-resolution radar processing

Current monopulse radar does not resolve multiple sources within the main beam, a scenario that arises in a number of radar applications such as ballistic missile defense, where the incoming missile complex consists of a large number of objects; air defense, where a detection may correspond to a single plane or multiple planes; cruise missile defense for low angle target tracking in multipath; etc. This paper describes a superresolution technique designed for radar applications requiring resolving multiple targets within the main beam given a single snapshot of multiple beam data. The technique enables the practical implementation of such super-resolution algorithm by first forming multiple beams in the analog domain to provide data and degree-of-freedom (DOF) reductions without significant loss of information. Super-resolution is then achieved through the use of matrix processing techniques operating on the digitized beamspace data. The overall procedure can be considered a generalization of the monopulse processing scheme to the multi-target case.