Stepped OFDM radar technique to resolve range and doppler simultaneously

Abstract

Recent developments involving the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) structure call for new potentials in radar. In this paper, a novel wideband OFDM based waveform is presented and the high range resolution (HRR) processing is derived.We show by means of comparisons with standard wideband waveforms the benefits of this concept. Radial velocities can be retrieved unambiguously and high velocities can be handled at no extra computational effort since the range migration constraint is related to the small pulse bandwidth as opposed to the large synthetic bandwidth. In our analysis, we inspect the impact of Doppler modulation on the processing and give recommendations for improvement in terms of the OFDM parameters. We address the problem caused by a correlation artefact and discuss the risk of intersymbol interference (ISI) typical with OFDM. Lastly, we show that our concept has inherent low probability of detection (LPD) characteristics.