A pulse may be divided into contiguous sequential frames, sometimes called sub-pulses. In a typical pulse-Doppler radar, receiving echo energy must be deferred until after the entire pulse waveform is transmitted. This sets a nearest possible range at which the beginning of the echo pulse can be processed. However, even when early frames or portions of frames are occluded or eclipsed by the transmit pulse, the echo from later frames may still be received and processed. This allows latter frames to be received in their entirety from nearer ranges than earlier frames or the entire pulse. As long as the latter frames still exhibit the desired resolution bandwidth, no loss of resolution is suffered by processing against only the latter frames. In this manner, a compound multi-frame pulse can be processed against a larger range swath than a more conventional pulse modulation scheme. Essentially, the traditional constraints between near-range detection and pulsewidth have been considerably loosened. Relative frame durations can be optimized to allow SNR to exceed some minimum level.

Date Published: 31 May 2013
PDF: 14 pages
Proc. SPIE 8714, Radar Sensor Technology XVII, 87141H (31 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2015327

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8714:
Radar Sensor Technology XVII
Kenneth I. Ranney; Armin Doerry, Editor(s)