Radon-fractional Fourier transform and its application to radar maneuvering target detection

Long-time coherent integration technique is one of the most important methods for the improvement of radar detection ability of weak moving target, whereas the integration performance may be greatly influenced by the across range unit (ARU) and Doppler frequency migration (DFM) effects. In this paper, a novel transform called the Radon-fractional Fourier transform (RFRFT) is proposed and investigated as a generalization of the conventional MTD and FRFT methods. The target's observation value in the range-slow time plane is firstly extracted according to the preset searching area of the moving target's parameters. Then the observation values are matched and accumulated in RFRFT domain by selecting proper transform angle and the long-time coherent integration process of the non-uniformly moving target is done. Using the amplitude and phase information together, the proposed method can compensate the ARU and DFM effects simultaneously. Finally, simulations are carried out and the performances of different methods including MTD, FRFT, and the Radon-Fourier transform (RFT) are compared, which demonstrate the effectiveness of RFRFT.