On motion compensation for weak radar reflected signal detection

Detection of a weak radar reflected signal is to enhance the target echo against background noise or clutter using a long-term integration technique. During the integration duration, the target echo may migrate from one cell to another across the radar's resolution cells, e.g., range cell migration and Doppler cell migration; thus motion compensation must be considered to achieve better detection performance. If the radar can work in a long dwelling mode of the antenna pattern or have a slowly scanned antenna pattern, a new framework for detecting radar returned signals can be proposed. The method presented employs motion compensation based on range stretching and joint time frequency processing in the case of both range and Doppler cell migration. A practical realization of such a detector is suggested and performance analysis is given. Demonstrations on a real data set confirm its effectiveness.