Pseudo Maximum Likelihood Estimations of ballistic missile precession frequency

We first establish the dynamic Radar Cross Section (RCS) signal model for a conical ballistic missile warhead with precession motion. Scintillation is modeled as a log-normal multiplicative noise. The distribution of the obtained RCS signal is nonGaussian and cannot be obtained in closed-form. Hence, the exact Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE) of the pertinent parameter, the missile precession frequency, is untractable. We propose three pseudo MLE approaches. The first approach, called GML, enforces a Gaussian distribution on both the additive and multiplicative noise components. The second approach, called ML8, ignores the additive noise in the measured RCS. The third approach, called AOML, ignores the multiplicative noise. Simulations show that accounting for the multiplicative noise in the estimation significantly improves estimation performance.