Range profiling of vessels with pseudo-random radar waveforms

High Resolution Range Profiles (HRRPs) are widely used in the field of Radar Non-Cooperative Target Recognition (NCTR). An exhaustive set of classification algorithms can be found in the scientific literature but it is not common to find the description of the architectures capable of generating range profiles. This work proposes a specific scheme of a 1-D high resolution imaging radar for maritime target recognition: it exploits pseudo-random radar waveforms which are well known for their properties in terms of Peak to Side Lobe Ratio (PSLR) and Auto-Correlation Function (ACF). Great emphasis is put on the high level system specifications. A description of the real time processing scheme is also introduced and the “proof of concept” is validated by a laboratory experiment.