Radar Signal Processing

To understand the signal modeling concepts in radar

To understand basic digital signal processing for radar application

To familiarize with the radar waveforms and their properties

To formulate the models of radar signals including target component, clutter, and noise.

To analyze basic problems and challenges in radar data acquisition.

To formulate radar waveform design problem to achieve desired properties.

To analyze Doppler aspects of the radar signals.

Unit I

Introduction, basic radar functions, elements of pulsed radar, review of selected signal processing concepts, preview of basic radar signal processing.

Signal Models

Components of a radar signal, amplitude models, simple point target radar range equation, distributed target forms of range equation, radar cross section (RCS), radar cross section for meteorological targets, statistical descriptions of RCS, Clutter, behavior of sigma_0, signal to clutter ratio, temporal and spatial correlation of clutter, compound models of RCS, noise model and Signal to Noise Ratio, jamming, frequency models: the Doppler shift, simplified approach to Doppler shift, the stop and hop assumption and spatial Doppler.

Unit II

Sampling and Quantization of Pulsed Radar Signals Domains and Criteria for sampling radar signals, time and frequency samples, spatial samples

sampling criteria, Sampling in the fast time dimension sampling in slow time, Sampling the Doppler spectrum, the Nyquist rate in Doppler, Straddle Loss, sampling in the spatial and angle domains, Phased array element spacing, Antenna beam spacing, Quantization.

Unit III

Radar Waveforms: Introduction, the waveform matched filter, the matched filter, matched filter for the simple pulse, all range matched filtering, range resolution of the matched filter, matched filtering of moving targets, the ambiguity function, definition and properties of the ambiguity function, ambiguity function of the simple pulse, the pulse burst waveform, matched filter for the pulse burst waveform, pulse by pulse processing, range ambiguity, Doppler response of the pulse burst waveform, ambiguity function for the pulse burst waveform, relation of the slow time spectrum to the ambiguity function, Frequency modulated (FM) pulse compression waveform, linear frequency modulation (LFM), the principle of stationary phase, ambiguity function of the LFM waveform, range-Doppler coupling.

Unit IV

Doppler Processing: Moving platform effects on the Doppler spectrum, moving target indication (MTI), pulse cancellers, vector formulation of the matched filter, matched filter for clutter suppression, blind speeds and staggered pulse repetition frequencies (PRFs), MTI figures of merit, limitations of MTI, pulse Doppler processing, the discrete time Fourier transform of a moving target, sampling the DTFT: the discrete Fourier transform, matched filter and filter-bank interpretations of pulsed Doppler processing with the DFT, fine Doppler estimation, modern spectral estimation in pulse Doppler processing.

Textbook

Mark Richards, Fundamentals of radar signal processing, McGraw-Hill education, 2005, 539pp.

Reference

Bassem R. Mahafza, Radar signal analysis and processing using Matlab, Chapman and Hall/CRC, 2008, 504pp.