Spectral Nulling on Transmit via Nonlinear FM Radar Waveforms

Modern radars operate in electromagnetic environments crowded with other RF users. Adaptive spectral nulling on transmit can reduce interference from and to these other RF users. An analytical theory is developed for spectral nulling by a minimal adjustment, or offset, to the phase of the radar pulse that maintains constant pulse amplitude. Numerical examples show that a small time-varying phase offset designed by the proposed method can produce deep spectral nulls at one or more chosen frequencies in the radar's spectral sidelobes with little other effect on the pulse spectrum or ambiguity function.