Tangential Maneuvering Target Detection for Airborne Cognitive Radar

This article investigates the tangential maneuvering target detection problem in range-ambiguous clutter. In particular, we take advantage of airborne radar's cognitive interpulse agility and develop an ambiguity function shaping method through joint optimization of the interpulse phase-agility waveform and the corresponding slow-time receiver's window function, with the objective of resisting range-ambiguous clutter. We first construct an optimization model that minimizes the clutter echo power of target-matched filter output under constant modulus, target peak-matching, and signal-to-noise ratio loss constraints. Subsequently, we transform it into two subproblems with respect to slow-time phase code and window function in each iteration, solving them alternatively to monotonically decrease the clutter echo power for obtaining the enhanced solution of the original problem. Simulation results illustrate that, given the cognitive target's range interval, the designed transceiver, as proposed, can successfully achieve tangential moving target detection in range-ambiguous clutter without prior knowledge of clutter distribution.