Efficient Iterative MMSE Range Profile Estimation

For adaptable pulse-agile radar systems, an optimal method to combine the responses from dissimilar transmit signals is sought. As the traditional method of matched filtering fails to provide sufficient performance in a pulse-agile regime, an iterative form of the MMSE estimator is presented to be the solution. By using the linear radar model and opting to process data within the temporal frequency domain, the implementation of the iterative MMSE estimator becomes computationally efficient. This method is compared with matched filtering, in both simulation and experimental data, and shown to produce a more accurate estimate of the scattering profile with finer range resolution and decreased correlation error.