Space-Based Radar System for Space Target Detection: Concept and Design

Compared with the ground-based radar (GBR) system and the space-based optical (SBO) system, the space-based radar (SBR) system has a better space target detection coverage and it is not constrained by the Earth curvature. Therefore, the SBR system is utilized to detect high-speed low-orbit space targets. In practice, the vital important foundation for the SBR system is operating parameter design study. Hence, a feasibility parameter design principle and appropriate parameter settings are studied and demonstrated based on space target detection scenarios. Then, to correct the severe range cell migration (RCM) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) effectively in space target detection scenarios, an improved Gram Schmidt (GS)-orthogonalization orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) method is utilized in this paper. Furthermore, the SBR system generally utilizes medium pulse repetition frequency (MPRF) to obtain information of space targets, which will inevitably bring about range ambiguity and velocity ambiguity simultaneously. To resolve ambiguity and obtain the real range and real velocity, a dual carrier frequency and dual PRF (DFDP) strategy is designed in this paper. Simulation results validate the effectiveness and robustness of the improved GS-based OMP method and the DFDP ambiguity-resolving operation.