A Proposed Technique for Improving SNR in Pulse Compression Radars

Abstract

From the birth of radars, researchers are racing to provide the best solutions for enhancing radar systems detectability over long ranges by improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). As the world witnesses a huge progress in all fields, radar targets become small in size, and they often have a structure designed according to the stealth topology. As a result, their detection becomes a hard operation. Therefore, there is an insistent need for techniques that increase the system processing gain, to boost the its detection performance. Almost all proposed methods for increasing the radar processing gain require huge physical resources in the radio frequency front-end, or in the digital signal processing hardware implementation. Therefore, these solutions seem to be expensive and sometimes not practical. In this article, we are introducing a technique for increasing the radar system processing gain operating with phase-coded signals, which in turn enhances the system SNR and its detection capability. The proposed approach depends on using $n$ samples per the received signal subpulse, using two coherent pulse intervals for taking decisions. In addition, the required hardware resources for the practical implementation of the suggested method is near to the conventional processing that depends on one sample per subpulse. The method methodological model will be discussed, and the simulation results are presented to ensure the advantage of the proposed technique.