Approach for AMTI Formation Design in a Distributed Space-based Radar System

Due to existence of the long along-track baseline (ATB) among the different satellites in a distributed space-based radar (DSBR) system, a large number of grating lobes appear in radar returns, causing the non-continuous detection phenomenon of an air moving target (AMT). To solve this problem, in this paper, a novel approach for ATB distribution design in a DSBR system is proposed. In the proposed algorithm, to reduce the amount of spatial ambiguity points located at the main-lobe region and achieve the best air moving target indication (AMTI), the maximum target detectability ratio (TDR) in the main-lobe region is chosen to be the criteria for the optimal ATB design. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by the simulated multi-channel radar data in a DSBR system.