Airborne Radar Multi-target Detection for Tracking in Clutter Using Non-Uniform Pulse Interval Transceivers Design

This paper deals with the joint design of slow-time code and space-time receive filters for non-uniform pulse interval airborne radar, aiming to enhance the detection capability against partially overlapping clutter components while tracking multi-target. Two design strategies for transceivers optimization are introduced, contingent upon the knowledge of the relative importance among targets. An iterative procedure is developed for both the average signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR) and the worst-case SINR design problems, ensuring that the SINR monotonically increases and convergences to a finite value. As to the average design, each iteration of the proposed algorithm involves the generalized Rayleigh quotient used for the space-time receive filters design, and a nested iterative technique incorporating quadratic transform (QT) procedure with an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to optimize the radar code. For the worst-case design, a proximal ADMM is proposed as a direct replacement for the ADMM in the average design paradigm. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform state-of-the-art methods in terms of the SINR behavior and computational efficiency.