STGRFT for Detection of Maneuvering Weak Target With Multiple Motion Models

Long time coherent integration (LTCI) technique enhances radar detection of maneuvering weak targets. Unfortunately, range migration (RM) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) would occur during the integration period. Existing LTCI methods are all based on the assumption that the target is of single motion model (i.e., the target's motion model is fixed) during the long integration time. However, with increasing target's maneuverability and long observation time (needed to detect weak targets), the target's motion model is often changing (i.e., target is of multiple motion models) during the integration time, which would reduce the performance of existing LTCI methods significantly. In this paper, we address the LTCI problem for detecting a maneuvering weak target with multiple motion models, where the target signal model is first established. Thereafter, the short-time generalized Radon Fourier transform (STGRFT) based LTCI algorithm is proposed. The STGRFT method could not only eliminate RM and DFM but also estimate the model-changing point (i.e., the time when target's motion model changes) and accumulate the target energy distributed in different motion stages (corresponding to different motion models). Finally, numerical and real-data experiments are carried out to demonstrate its effectiveness. The results confirm that in terms of integration gain, input-output signal-to-noise ratio performance and detection ability, STGRFT-based method is superior to the existing popular LTCI algorithms.