Micromotion feature extraction of radar target using tracking pulses with adaptive pulse repetition frequency adjustment

In multifunction phased array radar systems, different activities (e.g., tracking, searching, imaging, feature extraction, recognition, etc.) would need to be performed simultaneously. To relieve the conflict of the radar resource distribution, a micromotion feature extraction method using tracking pulses with adaptive pulse repetition frequencies (PRFs) is proposed in this paper. In this method, the idea of a varying PRF is utilized to solve the frequency-domain aliasing problem of the micro-Doppler signal. With appropriate atom set construction, the micromotion feature can be extracted and the image of the target can be obtained based on the Orthogonal Matching Pursuit algorithm. In our algorithm, the micromotion feature of a radar target is extracted from the tracking pulses and the quality of the constructed image is fed back into the radar system to adaptively adjust the PRF of the tracking pulses. Finally, simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. © The Authors. Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI. [DOI: 10 .1117/1.JRS.8.083569]