Sparse Phase Estimation and Processing of Independent Coherent Processing Intervals

Abstract

Radars employing electronically steering arrays are capable of instantaneously altering the direction of the beam along with other parameters. This flexibility offers great opportunities to a radar as it may e.g. divide its time between several directions or frequently modify the waveforms being emit. These kinds of techniques can often result in several sequences of coherent processing intervals illuminating the same area, however, the data may not necessarily be coherent across the acquired sections. In this paper we propose a technique based on sparse reconstruction to transform such groups of blocks into a single continuous coherent entity. Data obtained from an experimental radar is used to validate the techniques.