Your browser does not support JavaScript!
http://iet.metastore.ingenta.com
1887

access icon free Near-optimal estimation of radar pulse modulation waveform

© The Institution of Engineering and Technology
Received 31/07/2014, Accepted 07/03/2016, Revised 26/01/2016, Published 01/08/2016

In this study, the authors focus on pulse modulation waveform estimation based on a sequence of intercepted pulses from the same radar emitter. In general, modulation waveform estimators first perform pulse alignment in time and frequency separately, and then accumulate the aligned pulses to estimate the waveform. However, commonly used alignment methods may lead to considerable alignment errors which are difficult to detect and compensate, especially under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions, resulting in non-ideal effects of accumulation. This study proposes a robust and nearly optimal modulation waveform estimation algorithm. The new algorithm first aligns pulses in time and frequency jointly via the cross-ambiguity function to avoid the transfer and accumulation of alignment errors. After that, an iterative maximum-likelihood estimator is invoked to achieve the waveform estimation. Theoretical analysis and extensive experiments show that the proposed algorithm has much smaller alignment errors and better modulation waveform and modulation parameter estimation ability than competing methods at low SNRs, and can approach the ideal case. Moreover, this algorithm does not make any assumption on the type of modulation and is computationally efficient, thus having broad applications.

Inspec keywords: maximum likelihood estimation; iterative methods; pulse modulation; radar signal processing

Other keywords: modulation waveform estimator; pulse alignment method; alignment error transfer avoidance; low signal-to-noise ratio condition; accumulation nonideal effects; alignment error detection; alignment error accumulation avoidance; radar emitter; alignment error compensation; iterative maximum-likelihood estimator; smaller alignment errors; intercepted pulse sequence; low SNR condition; radar pulse modulation waveform near-optimal estimation; cross-ambiguity function

Subjects: Other topics in statistics; Modulation and coding methods; Radar theory; Interpolation and function approximation (numerical analysis)

References

    1. 1)
    2. 2)
      • 11. Lundén, J., Koivunen, V.: ‘Robust estimation of radar pulse modulation’. Proc. the Sixth IEEE Int. Symp. on Signal Processing and Information Technology (ISSPIT), Vancouver, Canada, 2006, pp. 271–276.
    3. 3)
    4. 4)
    5. 5)
    6. 6)
    7. 7)
    8. 8)
      • 15. Ma, Y.F., Shan, T., Tao, R.: ‘Civil illuminators based passive radar signal analysis and processing’, Syst. Eng. Electron., 2004, 26, (12), pp. 1755–1757.
    9. 9)
    10. 10)
      • 14. Ge, X.J., Song, J., He, Y.: ‘Time delay and Doppler shift estimation accuracy analyses of moving targets in non-cooperative bistatic pulse radar’. Proc. Tenth Int. Conf. Signal Processing, Beijing, China, 2010, pp. 2291–2294.
    11. 11)
    12. 12)
      • 10. Lee, J.P.Y.: ‘A multi-channel digital receiver for intra-pulse analysis and direction finding’. Proc. IEEE Pacific Rim Conf. on Communications, Computers and Signal Processing (PacRim), Victoria, Canada, 1999, pp. 589–592.
    13. 13)
    14. 14)
      • 9. Howard, S.D.: ‘Estimation and correlation of radar pulse modulations for electronic support’. Proc. IEEE Aerospace Conf., Big Sky, USA, 2003, pp. 2065–2072.
    15. 15)
    16. 16)
      • 17. Letchford, A., Gao, J.B., Zheng, L.H.: ‘Optimizing the moving average’. Proc. IEEE Int. Joint Conf. Neural Networks (IJCNN), Brisbane, Australia, June 2012, pp. 1–8.
    17. 17)
    18. 18)
      • 12. Lundén, J., Koivunen, V.: ‘Scaled conjugate gradient method for radar pulse modulation estimation’. Proc. IEEE ICASSP, Honolulu, USA, 2007, pp. 297–300.
    19. 19)
    20. 20)
    21. 21)
      • 1. Langley, L.E.: ‘Specific emitter identification (SEI) and classical parameter fusion technology’. Proc. IEEE WESCON, San Francisco, USA, 1993, pp. 28–30.
http://iet.metastore.ingenta.com/content/journals/10.1049/iet-spr.2015.0273
Loading

Related content

content/journals/10.1049/iet-spr.2015.0273
pub_keyword,iet_inspecKeyword,pub_concept
6
6
Loading
Print this page
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address