On the use of time-frequency domains for the improvement of the Stochastic Matched Filter Pulse Compression scheme with a high speed computing architecture

In several domains of engineering technologies, such as telecommunication, sonar imaging, positioning systems, radar, medical imaging ..., the main problem is to identify a transmitted useful pulse in a noise-corrupted received signal. A solution to this problem consists in using a modulated pulse for emission and a matched filter for reception. Such a concept is known as pulse-compression. Taking into account the main assumptions of the matched filter theory, the use of the bandpass transmitted pulse as matched filter´s impulse response is only available if the useful signal is well known and if the noise is white, which is not the case in practice. For this reason, it has been recently proposed an alternative to the classical pulse-compression scheme taking into account the random nature of the useful signal and the coloration of the noise. This new principle is known as the SMF-PC. Although, this method allows a great improvement in terms of signal to noise ratio compared to the classical pulse-compression technique, the SMF-PC appears under optimal due to stationary assumptions. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to propose an improvement of the SMF-PC by coupling this technique with a time-frequency method. Results obtained on synthetic and real data are proposed and discussed.