A fast coherent integration detection method for highly maneuvering target

Developing a fast and effective detection algorithm of a highly maneuvering target has always been a challenging task due to large range migration (RM) and Doppler frequency modulation (DFM), especially in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) environment. In this paper, a fast detection method based on phase difference (PD) and coherently integrated cubic phase function (CICPF) for highly maneuvering target in the case of low SNR is developed. First, the received signal along the slow-time dimension at each range-frequency gate is modelled as a polynomial phase signal (PPS), and then PD operation is adopted to remove the range cell migration (RCM) and to reduce the order of DFM. To achieve the long-time coherent integration, the CICPF is developed to enhance the output SNR for highly maneuvering target. Thanks to the coherent integrations, the proposed method is computationally efficient and demonstrates satisfactory performance in the low SNR environment. The numerical results are provided to verify the performance of the proposed method in the low SNR condition and computationally complexity.