Improvement in Tracking Accuracy of Pulse Radar by Coherent Techniques

The theory of optimum linear prediction and filtering is applied to determine the optimum system response of pulse (noncoherent) and pulse-Doppler (coherent) radars for target motions consisting of 1) random steps of velocity, and 2) random steps of acceleration. The rms error in velocity data is calculated for each system, and the improvement factor of pulse-Doppler over pulse radar is obtained. The improvement factor is considerably greater in the case of random steps of acceleration, demonstrating that the relative accuracy of the two systems depends on the nature of the target motion, as well as on the radar parameters. Although the errors in both systems are reduced somewhat by allowing large delays in output data, the relative accuracy is found to be unchanged.