Approach for Along-Track Baseline Distribution Design in a Multi-Satellite Distributed Space-Based Radar System

Due to existence of the long along-track baseline (ATB) between the satellites in a distributed space-based early warning radar (DSBEWR) system, a large number of grating lobes appear in radar returns, causing the noncontinuous detection phenomenon of an aerial moving target (AMT). To solve this problem, in this paper, a novel approach for ATB distribution design in a muti-satellite DSBEWR system is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, to reduce the amount of spatial ambiguity points located at the main-lobe region, the main-lobe gain of the received antenna pattern in the azimuth dimension is designed to be maximum via the non-uniformly intersatellite ATB designment. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the simulated multi-channel radar data in a DSBEWR system.