Impact of Noise and Target Fluctuation on the Performance of Frank Polyphase Coded Radar Signals

Power-limited radar systems generally employ some form of pulse compression or waveform coding to improve range resolution. Frank polyphase coded waveforms have been used in the past for pulse compression in high resolution radars. This paper evaluates the impact of Swerling I and Swerling II target scintillation models in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) on the resolution properties of Frank coded waveforms. The results presented in this paper bear out the interesting fact that the use of an appropriate model is highly desirable to avoid misleading results.