Detection of weak maneuvering target based on KT-MFP

This paper considers the problems of the range migration (RM) and the Doppler frequency migration (DFM), which might appear in the detection of weak maneuvering target. We propose a novel coherent integration method to address these problems, which is based on the keystone transform (KT) and the matched filtering process (MFP), namely KT-MFP. In this algorithm, KT is firstly applied to correct the linear RM (LRM) induced by the unambiguous velocity. Then, by jointly searching in the fold factor and acceleration domain, the MFP is performed to eliminate the residual RM and the DFM. Finally, the slow time Fourier transform (FT) is conducted to coherently integrate the target's energy. In comparison with the generalized Radon Fourier transform (GRFT), the KT-MFP method requires a lower computational burden with similar integration performance. Numerical experiments are performed to verify the effectiveness of the presented method.