Adaptive pulse compression repair processing

It is well known that the standard matched filter used in radar pulse compression generates range sidelobes in the vicinity of large targets which can result in the masking of smaller nearby targets. Recently, pulse compression repair (PCR) was proposed as a means of suppressing the range sidelobes after matched filtering has taken place. This is especially applicable to in-service radar systems, where one may not have access to the received signal prior to standard pulse compression or where it may not be feasible to replace the current pulse-compression system. The PCR algorithm adaptively operates on the output of the standard matched filter, thereby treating the autocorrelation of the received waveform as if it were the transmitted waveform. This paper examines the effects of the Doppler mismatch on the PCR algorithm in which the resulting correlation between the transmitted waveform and the Doppler-shifted received waveform is mismatched to the waveform autocorrelation. It is shown that PCR degrades gracefully as Doppler mismatch increases, even in dense target scenarios.