Polynomial Radon-Polynomial Fourier Transform for Near Space Hypersonic Maneuvering Target Detection

For coherent integration detection of near space hypersonic maneuvering weak target via modern radar, a novel radar signal processing approach called polynomial Radon-polynomial Fourier transform (PRPFT) is proposed as a tool to compensate across range unit range walk and Doppler migration simultaneously caused by super-high speed and strong maneuvering. First, the target's observation values in the range-slow time plane are extracted by a kind of polynomial Radon transform according to the preset motion parameters of the searching space. Then, the observation values are matched and integrated by polynomial Fourier transform, and the hypersonic maneuvering target with arbitrary parameterized motion can be detected in the PRPFT domain. To reduce the computational complexity, a multiresolution method is proposed to search multidimensional parameter space. Finally, its application is illustrated to analyze and compare the performance between the proposed approach and the existing approach. It is shown that moving target detection and Radon-Fourier transform are actually special cases of PRPFT. The proposed method can compensate the range walk and the Doppler migration simultaneously, the detection performance of hypersonic maneuvering weak target may be significantly improved via PRPFT in the low signal-noise ratio background. The proposed algorithm can be used in the form of the second-order polynomial model, and it can also be extended to higher order form.