A clean signal reconstruction approach for coherently combining multiple radars

Abstract Distributed radars have the potential to combine coherently for achieving a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while maintaining a moderate antenna size. The key to coherently combining multiple radars is obtaining accurate coherent parameters (CPs), which are used to adjust the transmitting/receiving time and phase of each radar. One approach for CP estimation is to transmit orthogonal waveforms. However, ideally, orthogonal waveforms occupying the same frequency band may not be found in practice. Cross-correlation energy leakage exists between non-orthogonal waveforms, which seriously impairs the accurate acquisition of CPs. To solve this problem, we propose a clean signal reconstruction approach for CP estimation. This approach reconstructs clean echoes by gradually stripping out the cross-correlation energy leakage with a reconstruction-elimination-reconstruction framework. And CPs are obtained from these reconstructed clean echoes. Since the majority of cross-correction energy leakages are eliminated, enhanced CP estimation performance can be achieved. Verified simulations are designed for a dual radar scenario. Results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the performance of CP estimation while reducing the SNR requirement for coherently combining multiple radars