Range-Spread Target Detection Based on Cross Time-Frequency Distribution Features of Two Adjacent Received Signals

High resolution radars (HRRs) transmit a wideband signal to achieve a high range resolution. A target is considered as composed of multiple scatterers, which occupy or spread in multiple radar range cells with several scatterers in each cell. Therefore, the reflection of a target spreads in multiple range cells in the received signal, which contains more information of target than that obtained from low resolution radars. The target in high resolution radar systems is a range-spread target. The range-spreading or echo features of target are utilized for target detection and identification. The echoes of target are convolutions of transmitted signals with target range-scattering functions dependent on the gesture of target to the line of radar sight. A single echo is used in the conventional detection. It is difficult for target detection and identification in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) condition. In this paper, we propose a new range-spread target detection scheme exploiting the image features of cross time-frequency distribution (TFD) of a pair of adjacent received signals. After dechirping, the received signal reflected from target consists of multiple sinusoidal components due to its multiple scatterers when a linear frequency modulated (LFM) signal is transmitted from radar. Some regular image patterns or features of target appear in the cross TFD of two adjacent received signals, while the cross TFD of two independent Gaussian noises does not show such patterns. The cross TFD features are exploited in the proposed scheme. Three steps are composed in the proposed scheme. Firstly, a cross smoothed-pseudo Wigner-Ville distribution (CSPWVD) is made for two adjacent received signals to generate a two-dimensional (2-D) TF image. Then, some regular geometric patterns are detected and extracted from the image. At last, two features of the extracted geometric patterns are jointly utilized to detect target. The proposed algorithm is verified by using raw radar data.- - It outperforms the conventional detection methods.