Target Detection in Low Grazing Angle with Adaptive OFDM Radar

Multipath effect is the main factor of deteriorating target detection performance in low grazing angle scenario, which results from reflections on the ground/sea surface. Amplitudes of the received signals fluctuate acutely due to the random phase variations of reflected signals along different paths; thereby the performances of target detection and tracking are heavily influenced. This paper deals with target detection in low grazing angle scenario with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar. Realistic physical and statistical effects are incorporated into the multipath propagation model. By taking advantage of multipath propagation that provides spatial diversity of radar system and frequency diversity of OFDM waveform, we derive a detection method based on generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT). Then, we propose an algorithm to optimally design the transmitted subcarrier weights to improve the detection performance. Simulation results show that the detection performance can be improved due to the multipath effect and adaptive OFDM waveform design