A Processing Technique for Accurate Target Angle Estimation using Wideband Monopulse Radars

Accurate target angle estimation is one of the challenges for wideband radars due to the fact that target occupies multiple range bins, resulting in lower energy or signal to noise ratio in a single range bin. This paper proposes a processing technique for enhanced accuracy of target angle estimates for wideband monopulse radars. Firstly, to accumulate the energy of the received echo signals from different scatterers on a target, the phase difference between different scatterers on a target is estimated using the minimum entropy phase estimation method combining with the correlation between adjacent pulses. Then, the monopulse ratio is obtained by using the signals from the accumulated sum and difference channels. The target angle is estimated by weighting the accumulated echo energy for accuracy enhancement. Experimental results based on both numerical simulation and measured data are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed technique.