Estimation of Benchmark Period for PRF Jitter Signal Based on Cumulative Histogram

Aiming at signal of PRF jitter radar, the estimation of benchmark period from sparse observation with noise is researched in this paper. For that problem, Casey and Sadler proposed one algorithm called MEA (Modified Euclidean Algorithm), which can adapt to the pre-estimation of benchmark period of TOA sequence with noise when there is no deviation. That algorithm needs to conduct continuous differential calculation and employs the differential value when iteration stops as final estimation of benchmark period. When the observation sparse level is high and SNR is low, that algorithm may obtain ineffective estimation. Aiming at the characteristics of PRF jitter signal, this paper utilizes differential accumulation of each order of TOA sequence to conduct pre-estimation to its benchmark period. That both decreases the cumulative error and makes full use of information gain caused by large amount of jitter points, so as to achieve effective estimation to benchmark period under low SNR and period-noise ratio. Practical tests are conducted to jitter signal of navigation radar to validate the engineering feasibilty of the proposed algorithm.