Adaptive waveform design in rapidly-varying radar scenes

We consider a waveform-agile sensing algorithm for designing transmitted waveforms in rapidly-varying radar scenes to improve target detection performance. Specifically, we first track the scattering function of rapidly-varying sea clutter in low signal-to-clutter ratios (SCRs) at each burst by estimating the clutter's space-time covariance matrix. Simultaneously, we schedule the waveform to be transmitted in the next burst by minimizing the sea clutter influence based on the estimated clutter statistics. The effectiveness of our waveform-agile sensing approach is demonstrated by detecting a moving target in heavy sea clutter using configured waveforms, and then comparing the resulting performance to that of detecting the target using fixed-parameter linear frequency-modulated w.aveforms.