Effect of Particular Gain Changes upon LFM Sidelobes

The envelope variation of an LFM waveform due to transmitter droop or receiver STC tends to cause range sidelobes. A parametric analysis of the magnitude of the sidelobes has been performed. It is shown that the sidelobes can be quite high at the matched filter output, but are low at the output of the sidelobe reduction filter. 40-dB sidelobes can be achieved even with a 4-dB envelope droop. It is shown that these results are consistent with conventional paired-echo theory. Similar results are shown to hold for droop variations of the filter transfer function.