Suppression of Noise Floor and Dominant Reflectors in Random Noise Radar

Abstract

Noise radar can be used in a great number of applications. Wide bandwidth gives high range resolution, and the non-periodic waveform suppresses the range ambiguity. Due to the randomness of the waveform, a noise floor limiting the possible side lobe suppression accompanies the correlation integral. In strong clutter with dominant reflectors the induced noise floor can be too high and further suppression is needed. Improved clutter cancellation methods have mainly been discussed in connection to pseudo-random bi-phase pulse compression radar. In this paper, mismatched filtering is applied to suppress the side lobes of random noise radar. An iterative subrtraction algorithm for cancellation of noise floor due to dominating reflectors is analysed and is successfully tested on both random step frequency radar data and noise sodar data.