Fast coherent integration for maneuvering target with high-order range migration via TRT-SKT-LVD

This paper addresses the coherent integration problem for detecting a maneuvering target with high-order range migration (RM), where the velocity, acceleration, and jerk result in, respectively, the first-order range migration (FRM), second-order range migration (SRM), and third-order range migration (TRM) within the coherent pulse interval. A fast coherent integration method based on time reversing transform (TRT), second-order keystone transform (SKT) and Lv's distribution (LVD), i.e., TRT-SKT-LVD, is proposed. In this method, TRT operation is first presented to remove the TRM and FRM simultaneously. After that, the SKT is employed to correct the remaining SRM and then the coherent accumulation could be obtained via LVD. The proposed algorithm is simple and fast in that it can be easily implemented by using complex multiplications, the fast Fourier transform (FFT), and inverse FFT (IFFT). Compared with the existing methods, the presented method can realize the coherent integration without any searching procedure and can achieve a good balance between the computational cost and detection ability. Both simulated and real data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.