<title>High-resolution radar ranging for multiple targets</title>

Abstract

The similarity between the multiple-target radar ranging problem and the multi-user detection problem in CDMA is drawn: in CDMA, users' bits modulate distinct but correlated signature signals; while, in radar, the "bits" are range-bin occupancies and the "signatures" correspond to the known transmitted signal translated to be centered on the appropriate range bin. The analogy is useful: there has been a great deal of recent experience in CDMA, and one of the best and fastest algorithms uses a variant of probabilistic data association (PDA, the target-tracking philosophy). PDA can be augmented by group decision feedback (GDF) -another idea from CDMA -to reÞne the target delay estimates; and Þnally minimum description length (MDL) is applied to estimate the number of targets. Simulation examples are given to illustrate the resolution of closely spaced targets within what would normally be thought the same range bin. Its performance is also compared with the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and the alternating projection (AP) algorithm.