Performance Analysis of A Long-Term Integration Algorithm for Space-borne Radar Based on Segment Processing

Long-distance detection and tracking of weak targets in outer space is one of the key problems for the space-borne radar. Long-term Doppler integration technique is commonly used to improve detection range while the transmitter power is fixed. However, the real-time processing ability and memory volume limitation of DSP chips usable in outer space make it hard to implement long time Doppler coherent integration. Therefore, a long-term integration processing algorithm is proposed, combined intra-segment FFT processing and inter-segments DFT processing in the integration period to achieve long-term coherence ability. More emphasis is put on the performance analysis of the proposed algorithm. It proved the algorithm is quite fit for the real-time processing and greatly reduces the memory demand. Compared with the ideal theoretic coherent integration gains, SNR losses of the segment processing are only 2.4 dB. Finally, the computer simulations demonstrate the validity of theoretical analysis results.