Demanded Dwell Time Reduction Based on Prior RCS Fluctuation Constraint in Target Tracking

In the field of airborne radar resource management, one of the most accessible solutions to enhance the power of modern radar system is to save target tracking time as much as possible. During the target tracking process, it is effective to utilize the prior knowledge of the radar cross section (RCS) of the target to save airborne radar resource. Since the target RCS is sensitive to frequency and attitude angle, it is difficult to predict the target RCS accurately. This paper proposes an effective way to save airborne radar time resource in the target tracking process by changing radiation frequency of airborne radar to tolerate certain RCS fluctuation. Firstly, based on the tolerable fluctuation range of the target RCS, this paper designs an effective search algorithm to minimize the frequency set while maximizing the average RCS within the limited fluctuation range. Secondly, the detection probability prediction phase is renewed by taking the RCS fluctuation into account in order to reduce the radar dwell time. Finally, by using interactive multiple model Kalman filter (IMMKF) algorithm, a target tracking procedure with the minimum dwell time prediction method is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective. As for target tracking simulation of three different trajectories, the proposed method can save at best 81.35% more dwell time than the fixed frequency method