A Coordinate-Descent Framework to Design Low PSL/ISL Sequences

This paper is focused on the design of phase sequences with good (aperiodic) autocorrelation properties in terms of peak sidelobe level and integrated sidelobe level. The problem is formulated as a biobjective Pareto optimization forcing either a continuous or a discrete phase constraint at the design stage. An iterative procedure based on the coordinate descent method is introduced to deal with the resulting optimization problems that are nonconvex and NP-hard in general. Each iteration of the devised method requires the solution of a nonconvex min–max problem. It is handled either through a novel bisection or an FFT-based method respectively for the continuous and the discrete phase constraint. Additionally, a heuristic approach to initialize the procedures employing the $l_p$-norm minimization technique is proposed. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed methodologies can outperform some counterparts providing sequences with good autocorrelation features especially in the discrete phase/binary case.