High precision phase-domain radial velocity estimation for wideband radar systems

Radial velocity estimation used in wide-band radar systems is investigated. By analyzing the signal of cross-correlation output of adjacent echoes, it is found that the frequency and phase of the cross-correlation output are related to the target's radial velocity. Since the precision of the phase estimation is higher than that of the frequency, a phase-based velocity estimator is proposed. However, the ambiguity problem exists in the phase estimators, and thus the estimation of the cross-correlation of adjacent echoes (CCAE) is used to calculate the ambiguity number. The root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of the proposed estimator is derived. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed method is better than that of the frequency-based estimator.