Aspects of Doppler-Tolerant Radar Waveforms

The Doppler tolerance of a waveform refers to its behavior when subjected to a fast-time Doppler shift imposed by scattering that involves nonnegligible radial velocity. While previous efforts have established decision-based criteria that lead to a binary judgment of Doppler tolerant or intolerant, it is also useful to establish a measure of the degree of Doppler tolerance. The purpose in doing so is to establish a consistent standard, thereby permitting assessment across different parameterizations, as well as introducing a Doppler “quasi-tolerant” trade-space that can ultimately inform automated/cognitive waveform design in increasingly complex and dynamic radio frequency (RF) environments. 

Separately, the application of slow-time coding (STC) to the Doppler-tolerant linear FM (LFM) waveform has been examined for disambiguation of multiple range ambiguities. However, using STC with non-adaptive Doppler processing often results in high Doppler “cross-ambiguity” side lobes that can hinder range disambiguation despite the degree of separability imparted by STC. To enhance this separability, a gradient-based optimization of STC sequences is developed, and a “multi-range” (MR) modification to the reiterative super-resolution (RISR) approach that accounts for the distinct range interval structures from STC is examined. The efficacy of these approaches is demonstrated using open-air measurements. 

The proposed work to appear in the final dissertation focuses on the connection between Doppler tolerance and STC. The first proposal includes the development of a gradient-based optimization procedure to generate Doppler quasi-tolerant random FM (RFM) waveforms. Other proposals consider limitations of STC, particularly when processed with MR-RISR. The final proposal introduces an “intrapulse” modification of the STC/LFM structure to achieve enhanced sup pression of range-folded scattering in certain delay/Doppler regions while retaining a degree of Doppler tolerance.