Effect of a Few Dominant Specular Reflectors Target Model Upon Target Detection

Some data indicate that aircraft targets viewed from certain aspects are well modeled as consisting of a few specular reflectors. The effect of a simplified form of this target model upon radar detection performance for two different waveforms has been analyzed. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) required for detection as a function of waveform bandwidth for a conventional-single-channel waveform and for a four-channel frequency diversity waveform is evaluated. It is shown that for either waveform there is an optimum bandwidth to minimize the SNR required for detection. In addition, the single-channel minimum is less than the four-channel minimum. The best performance occurs for the single-channel waveform when the waveform bandwidth just resolves the individual reflectors. For typical targets, this bandwidth is of the order of 35 to 75 MHz. It is also shown that only a 0.8-dB loss relative to this minimum is incurred when using a four-channel narrow bandwidth waveform.