A New Method for Estimating Radar Profile Length of a Cone Target

Aiming at estimating high resolution range profile (HRRP) length for a cone target, a new method based on the optimal path algorithm is proposed. Firstly, integration of HRRP series of the cone target in certain duration. There are two strong scattering points in an instantaneous HRRP which correspond to top and bottom of the cone. Secondly, two penalty functions are constructed, in which one is amplitude penalty function related with amplitude of the points in HRRP, the other is distance penalty function which is related with the distance between the location of points in adjoining HRRPs. The optimal path of the strongest scattering center in HRRPs can be determined according to the minimum sum value of penalty functions. Then the track of secondary strong scattering center is determined and the distance between the strongest point and secondary point is the cone target HRRP length. The proposed method in this paper has a simple processing arithmetic and avoids threshold detection error. It can improve the correctness for range profile length estimation in strong-noise environment. The effectiveness of the proposed method is also verified by experimental data in this paper.