Improved calculation of monopulse target RCS

In monopulse radar target tracking systems, estimation of the radar cross section (RCS) of a given target under track is important for many reasons that include efficient waveform selection and revisit rate. In practice, for Rayleigh (Swerling I and II) targets, the RCS is calculated assuming an exponentially distributed observed SNR and using the parameter estimator for that distribution. However, detection thresholding and voltage saturation result in a censored distribution that may not be well addressed by the exponential estimator. In this paper, a maximum likelihood estimator of the target RCS is derived and compared to exponential parameter estimation. In addition, computationally cheaper approximations of the MLE are suggested and evaluated.