High Speed Dim Air Target Detection Using Airborne Radar under Clutter and Jamming Effects

The challenging potential problems associated with using airborne radar in detection of high Speed Maneuvering Dim Target (HSMDT) are the highly noise, jamming and clutter effects. The problem is not only how to remove clutter and jamming as well as the range migration and Doppler ambiguity estimation problems due to high relative speed between the targets and airborne radar. Some of the recently published works ignored the range migration problems, while the others ignored the Doppler ambiguity estimation. In this paper a new hybrid technique using Optimum Space Time Adaptive Processing (OSTAP), Second Order Keystone Transform (SOKT), and the Improved Fractional Radon Transform (IFrRT) was proposed. The OSTAP was applied as anti-jamming and clutter rejection method, the SOKT corrects the range curvature and part of the range walk, then the IFrRT estimates the target’ radial acceleration and corrects the residual range walk. The simulation demonstrates the validity and effectiveness of the proposed technique, and its advantages over the previous researches by comparing its probability of detection with the traditional methods. The new approach increases the probability of detection, and also overcomes the limitation of Doppler frequency ambiguity

A Weak Target Detection Algorithm IAR-STFT Based on Correlated K-distribution Sea Clutter Model

The detection performance of weak target on sea is affected by the special effects of sea clutter amplitude. Aiming at the time and space correlated of sea clutter, the correlated K-distribution sea clutter model is established by the sphere invariant random process algorithm. To solve the problems of range migration (RM) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) of moving target in the case of long-time coherent accumulation, a novel integration detection algorithm, improved axis rotation short-time Fourier transform (IAR-STFT) is proposed in this paper, which is based on a generalization of traditional Fourier transform (FT) algorithm and combined with improved axis rotation. IAR-STFT not only can eliminate the RM effect by searching for the target motion parameters, but also can divide the non-stationary echo signal without range migration into several blocks. Each block of signal can be regarded as a stationary signal without DFM and FFT is performed on each signal separately. The signals of each block are accumulated to detect the target in the background of the above sea clutter. Finally, the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by simulation. The results show that the detection ability of this algorithm is better than that of Radon-fractional Fourier transform, generalized Radon Fourier transform and Radon-Lv's distribution in low SNR environment, e.g., when the SNR is -45dB, the detection ability of this algorithm is about 55%, which is higher than that of Radon-fractional Fourier transform, generalized Radon Fourier transform and Radon-Lv's distribution

GNSS-based passive radar techniques for maritime surveillance

The improvement of maritime traffic safety and security is a subject of growing interest, since the traffic is constantly increasing. In fact, a large number of human activities take place in maritime domain, varying from cruise and trading ships up to vessels involved in nefarious activities such as piracy, human smuggling or terrorist actions. The systems based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponder cannot cope with non-cooperative or non-equipped vessels that instead can be detected, tracked and identified by means of radar system. In particular, passive bistatic radar (PBR) systems can perform these tasks without a dedicated transmitter, since they exploit illuminators of opportunity as transmitters. The lack of a dedicated transmitter makes such systems low cost and suitable to be employed in areas where active sensors cannot be placed such as, for example, marine protected areas. Innovative solutions based on terrestrial transmitters have been considered in order to increase maritime safety and security, but these kinds of sources cannot guarantee a global coverage, such as in open sea. To overcome this problem, the exploitation of global navigation satellites system (GNSS) as transmitters of opportunity is a prospective solution. The global, reliable and persistent nature of these sources makes them potentially able to guarantee the permanent monitoring of both coastal and open sea areas. To this aim, this thesis addresses the exploitation of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) as transmitters of opportunity in passive bistatic radar (PBR) systems for maritime surveillance. The main limitation of this technology is the restricted power budget provided by navigation satellites, which makes it necessary to define innovative moving target detection techniques specifically tailored for the system under consideration. For this reason, this thesis puts forward long integration time techniques able to collect the signal energy over long time intervals (tens of seconds), allowing the retrieval of suitable levels of signal-to-disturbance ratios for detection purposes. The feasibility of this novel application is firstly investigated in a bistatic system configuration. A long integration time moving target detection technique working in bistatic range&Doppler plane is proposed and its effectiveness is proved against synthetic and experimental datasets. Subsequently the exploitation of multiple transmitters for the joint detection and localization of vessels at sea is also investigated. A single-stage approach to jointly detect and localize the ship targets by making use of long integration times (tens of seconds) and properly exploiting the spatial diversity offered by such a configuration is proposed. Furthermore, the potential of the system to extract information concerning the detected target characteristics for further target classification is assessed