An Isometry Metric for Waveform Assessment in the Presence of Correlated Interference

Abstract

The restricted isometry property (RIP) is used in compressive sensing (CS) to assess sensing performance. In this article, we apply a RIP-inspired metric as a novel technique for quantifying radar waveform performance. While the RIP has importance with respect to CS, its application has been limited to compressed measurements corrupted by uncorrelated interference. Active radar systems, however, are often expected to detect signals in the presence of waveform-dependent correlated interference, such as ground clutter. Therefore, we introduce a RIP-inspired isometry metric (IM) that accounts for correlated interference via a whitening transformation. This modification of the RIP accounts for the waveform-dependent nature of received signals and clutter, which then enables its use as a quantitative waveform performance metric. The proposed IM can handle nonuniform pulse repetition intervals and other diversity techniques used to mitigate range–Doppler ambiguities. The benefits of the proposed metric are demonstrated through various simulated examples that yield intuitive and quantitative waveform comparisons.