Novel iterative techniques for radar target discrimination

In this paper, transmission waveforms for an M-target ID problem are compared and analyzed under a hypothesis testing framework. Waveforms based on mutual information between a target ensemble and the received waveforms, under time and energy constraints, have already been determined. They are applied to the M-target ID problem, and compared with the solution obtained by maximizing the average distance between hypotheses. A single illumination is considered first with regard to the binary and the M-ary target ID problem. A new iterative transmission scheme is proposed that calculates the probability of each hypothesis and updates the transmission waveform at each step. This is coupled with a sequential multi-hypotheses testing procedure and shown that for the same error rate, the proposed iterative scheme combined with an information-based waveform can reduce the number of iterations to reach a decision.