Analysis of Spectrally Efficient Random FM Radar Waveforms

Random FM (RFM) waveforms have recently been demonstrated to achieve desirable power spectrum characteristics commensurate with low pulse compression sidelobes. Separately, the limitations of correlation-based processing were assessed by determining the optimum null-constrained power spectrum that minimizes correlation sidelobe levels. RFM waveforms that are spectrally shaped to approximate the optimum spectrum consequently exhibit near-optimum range sidelobe levels given sufficient degrees of freedom. In this context, an RFM design variant denoted Spectrally Weighted Frequency Template Error (SWiFTE) is evaluated relative to other modern designs. Performance analysis is expressed in terms of spectral containment, correlation sidelobe levels, and optimization convergence speeds.