Adaptive non-coherent integration

Radar systems use a combination of coherent and non-coherent integration to optimize detection performance. However, the optimum balance between coherent and non-coherent integration is a function of both radar operation and the target´s radar cross section statistics. In this paper a method for adaptively optimizing the balance of coherent and non-coherent integration for targets being tracked by a radar is proposed and experimentally validated. It is shown that choosing the optimum balance of coherent and non-coherent integration reduces the amount of the radar´s energy and thus time resources that must be expended to produce a satisfactory probability of detection.