Radar-based human detection and characterization with non-linear phase modeling

Many current radar-based human detection systems employ some type of Doppler or Fourier-based processing, followed by spectrogram and gait analysis to classify detected targets. However, in Fourier-based techniques the maximum output signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is given by targets whose target phase is linear. On the contrary, the phase variation of the human target response is nonlinear. This difference causes a significant loss in SNR, and therefore detection performance. In this paper, two novel, nonlinear phase detector designs based on human modeling are presented. In the first method, only the human torso reflections are modeled and unknown model parameters computed using Maximum Likelihood Estimation. In the second method, the entire human body is modeled as a different parametric model. The expected radar response for each combination of parameter values is stored in a database. An optimal sparse approximation to the data is found using Orthogonal Matching Pursuit. The performance of the proposed techniques and optimal space-time adaptive processing algorithm is compared and target characterization applications examined.