Doppler-compensated adaptive pulse compression

Within the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) context the adaptive pulse compression (APC) algorithm has been shown to effectively suppress the range sidelobes resulting from large targets to the level of the noise thereby unmasking nearby small targets and yielding substantial sensitivity improvement over deterministic matched/mismatched filtering techniques. However, this sensitivity improvement is limited by filter mismatch whenever the radar returns from large target(s) undergo a substantial Doppler phase shift caused by significant radial motion relative to the radar platform. To correct for the Doppler-induced filter mismatch, the Doppler compensated APC (DC-APC) algorithm is presented whereby the respective Doppler shifts for large target returns are jointly estimated along with the illuminated range profile and subsequently incorporated into the APC adaptive receive filter formulation thus suppressing the Doppler-mismatch-induced range sidelobes and regaining a significant portion of the sensitivity improvement of APC.