Effect of nonuniform target motion on radar backscattered waveforms

The effect of nonuniform motion on radar waveforms is discussed. By considering the physical model of a perfectly reflecting mirror with an arbitrary law of motion r(t), it is possible to determine the functional form of the scattered wave at the receiver for any waveform in general. The particular example of an interrupted continuous wave waveform is used to analyse the effect of nonuniform motion on the return spectrum. These models provide a theoretical foundation for the observations of micro-Doppler that have been discussed by a number of authors. Finally, some of the implications, both physical and mathematical, of nonuniform motion for time–frequency methods are addressed.

[1]  D. Swick.  AN AMBIGUITY FUNCTION INDEPENDENT OF ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT BANDWIDTH AND CARRIER FREQUENCY , 1966 .

[2]  Charles E. Cook,et al.  Radar Signals: An Introduction to Theory and Application , 1967 .

[3]  G. Kaiser.  TOPICAL REVIEW: Physical wavelets and their sources: real physics in complex spacetime , 2003, math-ph/0303027.

[4]  The generalized doppler effect and applications , 1973 .

[5]  J. Cooper.  Scattering of electromagnetic fields by a moving boundary: The one-dimensional case , 1980 .

[6]  Andrew M. Sessler,et al.  Relativity and Engineering , 1984 .

[7]  A. Papoulis.  Signal Analysis , 1977 .

[8]  Jeffery Cooper.  Scattering by moving bodies: The Quasi-Stationary approximation , 1980 .

[9]  Hao Ling,et al.  Time-Frequency Transforms for Radar Imaging and Signal Analysis , 2002 .

[10]  J. Van Bladel,et al.  Reflections from linearly vibrating objects: plane mirror at oblique incidence , 1981 .

[11]  J. E. Gray,et al.  The ambiguity function for broadband signals with application to objects undergoing non-uniform motion , 1992, [1992] Proceedings of the IEEE-SP International Symposium on Time-Frequency and Time-Scale Analysis.

[12]  D. Censor.  Theory of the Doppler effect: Fact, fiction and approximation , 1984 .

[13]  T. P. Gill,et al.  The Doppler effect : an introduction to the theory of the effect , 1965 .

[14]  Applications of the solution to the Rayleigh problem , 2000, Record of the IEEE 2000 International Radar Conference [Cat. No. 00CH37037].

[15]  S. Borkar,et al.  Reflection of electromagnetic waves from oscillating surfaces , 1975 .

[16]  P. Bertrand,et al.  A class of affine Wigner functions with extended covariance properties , 1992 .

[17]  Gerald Kaiser,et al.  Physical wavelets and radar: a variational approach to remote sensing , 1996 .

[18]  R. Kleinman,et al.  Scattering by linearly vibrating objects , 1979 .