High-Speed Target Tracking Method for Compact HF Radar

Compact high-frequency (HF) surface wave radar can be used for remote sensing of sea surface dynamic parameters, such as winds, waves, and currents, as well as hard targets, such as ships and low-altitude aircrafts. Due to its small antenna aperture, compact HF radar usually has a large error in direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, which significantly reduces its accuracy of target tracking. For a high-speed target, the DOA estimation error is greater due to range migration and Doppler frequency migration as well as rapid change in the DOA of target echo. A high-speed target tracking method for compact HF radar is proposed in this article, which utilizes the zero-mean property of the DOA error. First, the generalized Radon Fourier transform is used to estimate the target's motion parameters, and the multiple signal classification algorithm is used to estimate the target's DOA. The original target track is obtained by combining the range and DOA estimates. Next, multiple positions on the original track are selected as the base points, and for each base point, a predicted track can be calculated based on the target motion parameter estimates, thus multiple predicted tracks are obtained. Then, these predicted tracks are screened according to their headings. The remaining predicted tracks after screening are fused to obtain the final track. Numerical simulations and field experiments demonstrate that this method reduces the impact of DOA error on tracking accuracy and expands the application of compact HF radar for high-speed target tracking.