Impact of noise and target fluctuation on the performance of binary phase coded radar signals

Abstract

The authors evaluate the impact of Swerling I and Swerling II target scintillation models in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise on the resolution properties of pseudonoise (PN) sequence coded waveforms. There are two major factors which significantly affect the performance of radar systems. The first well-known factor is noise, ambient or intentional. The second factor is due to the variation in the echo signal with time: this is also called target fluctuation or scintillation. The effect due to each of these factors has been incorporated into the performance evaluation procedure by applying appropriate statistical models to the problem. The results presented bear out the fact that the use of an appropriate model is highly desirable to avoid misleading results.<>