Altitude measurement of low‐angle target in complex terrain for very high‐frequency radar. Issue 8 (1st October 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Zheng, Yisong; Chen, Baixiao
• Is Part Of: IET radar, sonar & navigation. Volume 9:Issue 8(2015)
• Page Start: 967
• Page End: 973
• Publication Date: 2015-10-01
• Subjects: height measurement -- multipath channels -- perturbation techniques -- learning (artificial intelligence) -- direction‐of‐arrival estimation -- radar signal processing -- data analysis -- Bayes methods -- radar computing; altitude measurement -- low‐angle targets -- complex terrain case -- very high‐frequency radar -- VHF radar -- steering vector -- perturbational multipath signal model -- gain errors -- phase errors -- spatial sparsity -- incident signals -- sparse Bayesian learning technique -- direction of arrival -- DOA accuracy -- real data analysis; Signal processing -- Periodicals; Radar -- Periodicals; Sonar -- Periodicals; Electronics in navigation -- Periodicals; Navigation -- Periodicals; 621.3848
• DOI: 10.1049/iet-rsn.2014.0544
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1751-8784

Abstract

Abstract : For low‐angle targets, the performance of altitude measurement is affected by multipath phenomenon. Especially, for complex terrain case, the main problem is due to the fact that the multipath signal is perturbed by irregular reflector, which leads to the mismatch of the steering vector, and thus degrades the performance of or even fails the existing methods. To deal with this problem, the authors propose a new perturbational multipath signal model, where perturbation caused by complex terrain is considered as the gain and phase errors of the steering vector of the multipath signal. With the spatial sparsity of the incident signals, the sparse Bayesian learning technique is adopted to estimate the perturbation and direction of arrival (DOA) iteratively. The computer simulation results show that their algorithm is able to estimate the effect of perturbation with high precision and to enhance the DOA accuracy compared with existing algorithms. Furthermore, real data analysis validates the efficiency of altitude measurement in practice. Finally, the proposed perturbational multipath signal model is also applicable to other situations where complex multipath phenomenon is not negligible.