Contribution of auxiliary coherent radar receiver to target's velocity estimation

Abstract

Recent progress in bistatic radar techniques can be used to improve performances of classical monostatic radar. A prominent limitation of coherent radar is its inability to measure the complete velocity vector (magnitude and direction) of a detected target. A single coherent detection can provide range-rate only. At least two detections, separated in time, are needed to estimate the target's velocity vector. This study discusses how the velocity vector can be determined by two simultaneous detections spaced in distance. The second detection is obtained by an auxiliary distant bistatic coherent receiver; an approach proposed in the 1990s to enhance meteorological radar. Being a very simple case of a distributed radar system allows for a simple demonstration of how to calculate the target's position and velocity vector and how to analyse the estimation accuracy, including geometric dilution of precision plots of the velocity error. Also discussed are two methods to identify correct data association when more than one target is detected.

Target Kinematic State Estimation With Passive Multistatic Radar

“…Having estimates of target instantaneous location, estimates of the target's instantaneous velocity vector are needed to create the description of its kinematic state, on which some other recent work has concentrated. The methods for evaluating the target velocity and its covariance matrix have been investigated based on the maximum likelihood estimation theories [22]- [24] or sparse Bayesian learning [25], etc. However, practical work and experimental results in this area are rarely seen for verifying the proposed algorithms and much less compared to work on target location [26]- [28], let alone with large numbers of transmitters and/or receivers.…”