A Study Of Clutter Suppression And Target Resolution Algorithm For Missile-borne Phased Array PD Radar

How to improve the combat capability of Pulse Doppler (PD) guidance radar inthe complex environment of severe fights, strong clutter, multi-objectives, etc. is aproblem to be resolved in the new generation of air-to-air missile, and using phasedarray technology in PD guidance radar could be an important means in solving thisproblem. The space-time adaptive processing methods of missile-borne phased-arrayPD radar, however, must be realized at the sub-array level due to its properties of lessmissile equipment and high real-time demanding.In response to the requirements discussed above, this paper studied the real-timeclutter suppression algorithm in the process of target detection of missile-bornephased-array PD radar, as well as the real-time super-resolution algorithm in theprocess of target resolution at the sub-array level in phased-array, and theperformance of these algorithms were also evaluated. Giving full play to the phasedarray technology, these algorithms achieved a balance in clutter suppressionperformance, target resolution performance, as well as the computational cost.Research work in this paper mainly includes:1. Advantages and problems of phased array PD guidance radar were firstlydiscussed, supplemented by the analysis and summarization of current research anddevelopmental trend of phased array PD guidance radar both at home and abroad.2. The signal processing of the missile-borne phased array PD radar wasanalyzed, and models were established of target signal, clutter signal, interferencesignal, as well as the monopulse angle measurement at the sub-array level.3. With respect to the target detection problem in the distance-Doppler plane area,an optimal spatial filtering algorithm at the sub-array level was proposed to suppressthe sidelobe clutter. Regarding real-time constraints in missile-borne application, asub-optimal real-time spatial filtering algorithm was also proposed at the sub-arraylevel, just modified on the basis of the optimal spatial filtering algorithm. Throughtheoretical analyses and simulations, these algorithms were assessed in respects of theloss of clutter suppression performance and improvement in the real-timeperformance. The results showed that the method don’t reach the SCR improvementof optimal filtering algorithm, but still able to achieve a large SCR improvement bylow computational cost. 4. For target resolution in main-lobe beams whose distance and speed arebasically the same but the angle is different, we proposed a real-time target resolutionalgorithm based on space-limited super-resolution processing at the sub-array level.Theoretical analysis and simulations showed: compared with traditionalsuper-resolution algorithm, the computation of this algorithm is relatively simple, andthe time consumption is similar to that of the conventional Discrete Fourier Transform(DFT) processing, with the target resolution capability in main-lobe beams.