A Novel Framework for Combining Multiple Radar Waveforms Using Time Compression Overlap-Add

Abstract

This paper presents a new radar system that combines any number and any kind of radar signals and transmits them simultaneously, thereby obtaining all the advantages of each of the radar waveforms used. This new system is based on a low-rate coded time compression overlap-add (TC-OLA) technique, and allows radar designers to address the challenge of having many features, such as high-time resolution, high-Doppler tolerance, low-sidelobe level, and low probability of intercept (LPI), in a single waveform. Since different types of radar waveforms usually offer different features, the new system allows the designers to obtain optimality via pluralism. The performance evaluation of the new radar system shows its superiority when examined under noise and heavy-tailed clutter background over the classical radar system and other methods of combination by operating on $N$-radar signals simultaneously, making use of features from each waveform, canceling the Doppler from a Doppler-intolerant signal, and adding an extra processing gain to the proposed system.