Abstract:

In the case of limited signal-to-noise ratio, the radar's detection performance for multiple targets is limited by parameter estimation accuracy and transmit pulse accumulation, and the waveform design provides a degree of freedom for radar performance improvement. In this paper, under the constraint of signal-to-noise ratio, the weighted sum of the hypothesis probability and the designed waveform is used to transmit the waveform iteratively, the waveform optimization method based on the mutual information maximization of a single hypothesis and the mutual information minimization between multiple hypotheses are proposed in stages. Parameter estimation accuracy improvement and the number of transmitted pulses reduction are realized. The simulation verifies the positive correlation between the target parameter estimation accuracy and the target detection performance. The results show that the waveform designed based on the two-stage mutual information criterion can quickly detect the orientation of multiple targets and improve the target detection performance.

Key words: mutual information, multi-target detection, signal-to-noise ratio, cognitive radar, waveform design