High-Speed Target Velocity Compensation and Detection/Tracking Algorithm to Improve Detection/Tracking Accuracy for Active Protection System Radar

The Active Protection System is a defense system that protects armored vehicles, such as tanks, from attacks by high-velocity projectiles such as anti-tank missiles, by actively neutralizing the projectile before it strikes the vehicle. Radars are essential for detecting and tracking threats approaching tanks at high speeds, and their tracking accuracy must be a few centimeters to precisely strike the target. However, when high-speed targets are tracked, range walk occurs owing to the target speed, resulting in a range tracking error proportional to the speed. In this study, we investigated a real-time speed compensation method by adjusting the NCO frequency in the signal pre-processing stage to secure the range tracking accuracy of radars suitable for active defense devices. To verify the performance of the algorithm, target signal simulation and signal processing were performed using MATLAB M&S. The final tracking performance was analyzed using CFAR and clustering for target detection and a Kalman filter-based tracking algorithm.