High-Speed Maneuvering and Spread Target Detection in High-Resolution Radar

In high-resolution radar, an observed target is segmented into isolated scattering centers (SCs) along the range domain, known as a range spread target (RST). Due to RST return energy is spilled into adjacent range cells, it is a formidable task for robust detection of RST. Moreover, both of range migration (RM) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) induced by its high speed and maneuverability will also disturb the detection performance. To address these problems, this paper proposes a joint coherent integration (CI) and detection method based on Keystone transform and sparse representation (KT-SR) for high speed and maneuvering RST detection. It can simultaneously perform the integration of inter-pulse and intra-pulse components of the target return. Firstly, the KT method is applied for range walk correction. Then, the DFM is mitigated by searching parameters of RST in the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detection model. Furthermore, the sparse representation is applied to estimate the target SCs to circumvent the drawback of target range spread, aiming to achieve incoherent integration among target SCs. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is validated through numerical simulations.