A processing technique for accurate target angle estimation using wideband monopulse radars

doi:10.23919/JSEE.2024.000091

Abstract

Abstract:

Accurate target angle estimation is one of the challenges for wideband radars due to the fact that target occupies multiple range bins, resulting in lower energy or signal to noise ratio in a single range bin. This paper proposes a processing technique for enhanced accuracy of target angle estimates for wideband monopulse radars. Firstly, to accumulate the energy of the received echo signals from different scatterers on a target, the phase difference between different scatterers on a target is estimated using the minimum entropy phase estimation method combining with the correlation between adjacent pulses. Then, the monopulse ratio is obtained by using the signals from the accumulated sum and difference channels. The target angle is estimated by weighting the accumulated echo energy for accuracy enhancement. Experimental results based on both numerical simulation and measured data are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.

Key words: wideband radar, target angle estimation, adjacent pulses, correlation

Chengzeng CHEN, Dan LIU, Xiaojian XU, Yaobing LU. A processing technique for accurate target angle estimation using wideband monopulse radars[J]. Journal of Systems Engineering and Electronics, 2025, 36(2): 370-379.

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Parameter	Value
Carrier frequency/GHz	35
Bandwidth/GHz	2
Pulse width/μs	400
Sampling rate/GHz	4
Target distance/km	300
Beam width/(°)	1
Scatterer number	4
SNR of each scatterer/dB	12
Target angle/(°)	0.4
Adjacent pulse number	4

Parameter	Value
Carrier frequency/GHz	35
Bandwidth/GHz	2
Pulse width/μs	400
Sampling rate/GHz	4
Target distance/km	300
Beam width/(°)	1
SNR of maximum scatterer/dB	12
Target angle/(°)	0.4
Minimum rotation angle/(°)	0.01

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