Adaptive waveform design for target detection in the wideband radar system

The target detection performance of radar can be improved by transmitting a waveform which matches the high-resolution range profile (HRRP) of the target. However, a serious degradation of the autocorrelation property always occurs in the matched waveform, which has a bad effect on radar parameter estimation. To solve this problem, a generalized model of HRRP which consists of the deterministic term and random term is introduced under the consideration of variations in the target impulse response. Based on the study of the generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT) detector and the objective functions for waveform design, an iterative algorithm with the criteria of maximizing the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and minimizing the minimum mean square error (MMSE) is proposed. Simulation results indicate that the design method can make a tradeoff between the performances of estimation and detection, and sequentially improve the detection performance based on the on-line estimates of the HRRP.