Cross-correlation processing based an energy detection algorithm for non-carrier UWB radar

In non-carrier Ultra-Wide Bandwidth (UWB) radar, the signal detection under the situation of range-walking and low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR), is a big challenge. For example, the coherent integration will lose the effect and the performance of traditional energy detection algorithm, using the target´s range-extended characteristic, will also decrease. Hence, an energy detection algorithm based on cross-correlation accumulation for non-carrier UWB radar is proposed in this paper. The new technique, the cross-correlation processing, makes use of the similarity of the envelopes between the adjacent echoes to carry out motion compensation. Besides, the false alarm probability of the proposed algorithm is analyzed in detail in this paper. The simulation results show that the SNR can be increased by non-coherent integration after motion compensation. And the performance of the proposed method is better than the traditional energy detection algorithm in low SNR situation.