Characterization of Doppler effects in the context of over-the-horizon radar

Abstract

This paper addresses the problem of the characterization of Doppler effect of maneuvering targets in the context of over-the-horizon radar. The received signal has a complex Doppler structure which is composed of several arrivals, each corresponding to a particular path. In essence, it consists of several close time-frequency components with non-linear signatures in the time-frequency domain. The nonlinearities are the projections of the target's motion vectors on the propagation paths. Estimating the time-frequency contents of all paths reveals the Doppler effects characterizing the target's trajectory. Analysis of such signals in the presence of strong clutter requires effective non-stationary signal processing techniques. In this paper, we propose a new technique based on local analysis of the phase information using warped high-order ambiguity function. The results depict resolvable multipath estimates which are very close to the ground truth.