Cooperated Range-Ambiguous Clutter Suppression Based on PA-FDA Dual-Mode Radar

Abstract

Range-ambiguous clutter suppression becomes a challenging task in the non-side-looking array due to the existences of range ambiguity and clutter range dependence simultaneously. Frequency diverse array (FDA) enables to resolve the range ambiguity, however, it comes at the cost of transmitted gain loss as compared to the phased array (PA). Therefore, by exploring integration between PA and FDA, a cooperated range-ambiguous clutter suppression method based on the PA-FDA dual-mode radar is proposed in this paper. First, the clutter covariance matrixes (CCMs) from different range-ambiguous regions can be estimated by using FDA technique. In the sequel, these independent covariance matrices are combined to estimate the covariance matrix for each particular range-cell of the PA radar. Therefore, the advantages of PA radar and FDA radar can be fully exploited by the PA-FDA dual-mode radar for range-ambiguous clutter suppression and moving target enhancement. Moreover, the enlarged beam coverage to the whole space and improved gain at particular angle for PA greatly contribute to the searching and tracking tasks, respectively. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.