A Simplified Modified Axis Rotational Transform - LV Transform (SMART-LvT) for High Speed and Accelerating Target Detection

In radar systems, high velocity and high accel-erating targets cause range cell migration (RCM) and range curvature (RC), resulting in a loss in detection performance using matched filters (MFs). To correct for RCM and RC, complicated algorithms are usually required. To compensate for low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) that occurs with far away targets, long integration times are used. Both solutions require more computations, but there is a strong trend in the radar community to be able to detect far away, maneuvering objects such as hypersonic vehicles (HVs) and missiles in real-time, requiring faster, more robust algorithms. Recently, an algorithm known as Modified Axis Rotation Transform-Lv's Transform (MART-L vT) has been developed, which can detect such targets at low SNR. But this algorithm requires several searches which make it computationally complex. In this paper, we propose using the Keystone Transform (KT) at the front-end of MART-LvT to provide an initial target range estimate, eliminating one of the searches. This reduces the computational complexity by a factor of L, the number of fast time samples, which can be 200 - 450 (23 - 26.5 dB) for many applications, with just a small increase from the KT (3 - 6 dB). Simulations show no performance hit, because the KT produces good range estimates at high target velocities and low SNR. The proposed approach performs well at about -12 dB SNR for target speeds up to Mach 8.