High resolution radar waveform design based on target information maximization

Although the transmit radar waveform design problem for maximizing target information has been studied widely in the past, the resolution requirement is normally ignored in such designs. Using maximizing target information as a criterion, a new radar waveform design method meeting the high resolution requirement is proposed in this paper, which makes no assumptions on the statistical distribution of target scattering. The objective function is proposed by maximizing the Pearson correlation coefficient (PCC) and the design is then transformed into an optimization problem, which is solved in two steps. Firstly, a closed-form expression for the discretized waveform with constant power constraint is derived in the time domain. Secondly, based on the bandwidth analysis of the optimal solution, a resolution improvement method considering information distortion is introduced and a suboptimal waveform is proposed while satisfying the constant power and resolution requirements. Finally, performance of the proposed radar waveform in terms of information acquisition, classification and resolution is analyzed and compared with the classic high-resolution linear frequency modulated waveform (LFMW). Simulation results show that the resolution of the suboptimal waveform is slightly lower than the LFMW, but more desirable in terms of peak sidelobe ratio (PSLR), information acquisition and classification.