An Improved Phase-Derived Range Method Based on High-Order Multi-Frame Track-Before-Detect for Warhead Detection

It is crucial for a ballistic missile defense system to discriminate the true warhead from decoys. Although a decoy has a similar shape to the warhead, it is believed that the true warhead can be separated by its micro-Doppler features introduced by the precession and nutation. As is well known, the accuracy of the phase-derived range method, to extract micro-Doppler curves, can reach sub-wavelength. However, it suffers from an inefficiency of energy integration and high computational costs. In this paper, a novel phase-derived range method, using high-order multi-frame track-before-detect is proposed for micro-Doppler curve extraction under a low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). First, the sinusoidal micro-Doppler range sequence is treated as the state, and the dynamic model is described as a Markov chain to obtain the envelopes and then the ambiguous phases. Instead of processing the whole frames, the proposed method only processes the latest frame at an arbitrary given time, which reduces the computational costs. Then, the correlation of all pairs of adjacent pulses is calculated along the slow time dimension to find the number of cells that the point scatterer crosses, which can be further used in phase unwrapping. Finally, the phase-derived range method is employed to get the micro-Doppler curves. Simulation results show that the proposed method is capable of extracting the micro-Doppler curves with sub-wavelength accuracy, even if SNR = −15 dB, with a lower computational cost.

A Novel 4D Track-before-Detect Approach for Weak Targets Detection in Clutter Regions

A 4D TBD approach is developed here for closely weak extended target tracking and overcoming heterogeneous clutter background and various clutter regions. The 4D measurements in this work are the points containing three positional information in spatial space and corresponding timestamp. The proposed method is mainly designed to address two issues. The first one is the dilemma between the weak target detection and difficult computation originating from the high dimensions of measurement. The second issue is the suppression of inhomogeneous background clutter and various clutter regions. The extension experiment using synthetic data showcases that no false alarm track would be built in the clutter regions, and the detection rate of close targets exceeds 94%. The experiments using real 3D radar also prove that the method works well in tracking closely maneuvering extended targets even if a clutter region exists.

Track-Before-Detect Procedures in AM Radio-Based Passive Radar

In amplitude modulation radio-based passive radar, the track-before-detect (TBD) procedures are performed to process long time observation data. This work mainly focuses on the tracking of the time-Doppler and time-azimuth traces of multiple target under real scenarios such as low signal-to-noise ratio, hybrid clutter, severe breaking points, and intersecting traces. A new original approach to deal with the TBD problem of this work is developed. Two types of linear equations according to the simplified radio wave propagation model are formulated, which is the key point of the proposed method. We make the theoretical analysis about how the linear equations can be used to track multiple target, and how multiple target’s constant velocities and initial positions can be estimated, which is an additional parameter estimation capability of the proposed method. Both the simulated data and real experimental data are performed with the proposed method and some conventional TBD methods. Several comparisons of the results are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Increasing the Radar Equivalent Energy Potential by “Track Before Detect” Method

The problem of radar detection of small-sized targets using the traditional methods of selection of signals embedded in background noise is considered. It is shown that for a false alarm rate of 10–5, which provides for 1–2 false alarms within the entire coverage of the modern 3D radar, the probability of detection of a small-sized target is getting unacceptably low. Repeatedly decreasing the threshold can provide an acceptable level of the detection probability at ultra-low signal-tonoise ratio (SNR) values. At the same time, decreasing the threshold will result in an unacceptable increase of the false alarm rate. A new target detection procedure using the “track before detect” method (TBD) is proposed. In the TBD procedure, the target is considered detected when two conditions are met: the signal exceeds once a definite threshold; the target is detected within a strictly defined observation area (acquisition or tracking gate). For low SNR values in the range of 3–8 dB and equal false alarm rate, the detection probability increases by 20–50 % compared to the traditional detection method. The simulation results showed a strong dependence of efficacy of the TBD algorithm on the threshold value and the decision rule. The possibility is noted of adaptive control over the threshold due to the use the detection results in the preceding scanning cycles, as well as the introduction of matrix radar surveillance not only by the target coordinates and parameters, but also by the detection threshold, decision rules, etc. Examination of these issues is the subject of further research.