Angular Spectra in Radar Applications

Abstract

Recent advances in the art of estimating spectral densities have led to speculation that these same techniques could be used to improve angular resolution in radar applications. An improvement in angular resulution would be particularly helpful in sepingrating low angle returns from their surface reflected images. Despite the duality between time and space, however, it turns out that the low angle radar problem is different from the usual spectral estimation problem in a rather fundamental way. The unfortunate result is that the improved spectral estimation techniques are of little, if any, value in solving the low angle tracking problems.