Design of a multi-resolution phase-coded waveform in the presence of a colored Gaussian clutter

In current airborne radars, detection and identification are done with two distinct waveforms. However, while the radar switches from one function to another, the target scene can change. In this paper, we propose a hybrid waveform combining intra and interpulse phase codes. This waveform is first processed in a low-resolution “channel”. Then, if a target is detected, the received signal is reprocessed in a high-resolution “channel”. Given the above scenario and assuming that the received data are disturbed by a colored Gaussian clutter, we address the optimization of the phase codes by searching the Pareto front of a multi-objective optimization problem. Finally, we aim at analyzing the sensitivity of the Pareto front to the clutter properties. For this purpose, we study whether a first-order autoregressive (AR) modelling for the clutter in the high-resolution case is relevant or not.