Velocity estimation of high-speed target for step frequency radar

Aiming to precisely estimate the velocity of high-speed targets for step frequency ( SF) radar, a positive-positive-negative SF waveform consisting of two continuous positive SF pulse trains and a negative one is designed, and a velocity estimation method is proposed based on two-dimensional time-domain cross correlation (2-D TDCC). Making full use of the characteristics of the designed waveform, the coarse velocity estimation is achieved by 2-D TDCC of positive-positive SF pulse trains and then the Radon transform is applied to solve velocity ambiguity for high-speed targets. After velocity compensation for positive-negative SF pulse trains, the velocity residual is estimated precisely by 2-D TDCC. Simulation results show that the proposed method exhibits good performance for estimation accuracy, stability performance, computational complexity, and data rate by comparisons. (C) 2016 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)