Ballistic missile precessing frequency extraction based on maximum likelihood estimation

We establish the dynamic Radar Cross Section (RCS) signal model for a conical ballistic missile warhead with precession motion. Two Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) approaches are presented for the estimation of the important missile precession frequency. In one method we approximate a log-normal multiplicative process by a Gaussian process. In the second method we assume zero additive noise. While the approximations in both methods are introduced to make the mathematics tractable, simulations show the practical usefulness of both approaches.