An Efficient Coherent Integration Method for Highly Maneuvering Target Detection by Exploiting Range–Azimuth Coupling Relationships Between Subsegments

Arbitrary-order range migrations (RMs) and Doppler frequency migrations (DFMs) caused by complicated motions of highly maneuvering targets (HMTs) pose challenges for coherent integration (CI) in radar remote sensing and detection applications. Complicated Doppler frequency ambiguity improves the challenges of CI for HMTs. The optimal generalized Radon-Fourier transform (GRFT) suffers from a large computational cost, and nonlinear transform-based methods are affected by severe performance loss. To tackle these difficulties, an efficient segmented CI method for HMT detection via the range-azimuth coupling relationship between subsegments is proposed. First, inspired by the advantage of subaperture processing, a segmentation operation is introduced to remove intrasegment RMs and DFMs. Second, a high-order compensation function is presented to remove the high-order intersegment RMs and DFMs. Third, by exploiting the range-azimuth coupling relationship between subsegments, a residual migration compensation function is used to correct the residual intersegment RM. Thus, a well result of HMT’s CI is achieved. The proposed method handles arbitrary-order RMs and DFMs, complex Doppler ambiguity, and ambiguous speed sidelobes (BSSLs) in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) circumstances and multitarget cases due to its linear transform property. In comparison to the optimal GRFT, the proposed approach substantially lowers computational cost while showing similar performance. Then, the presented approach can be implemented by parallel processing. It is advantageous to enhance real-time processing efficiency. Several real radar data are analyzed to confirm the effectiveness of the developed method.