Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Contents
Design Specifications Monostatic Radar System Design System Simulation Range Detection Summary
Design Specifications
The design goal of this pulse radar system is to detect non-fluctuating targets with at least one square meter radar cross section (RCS) at a distance up to 5000 meters from the radar with a range resolution of 50 meters. The desired performance index is a probability of detection (Pd) of 0.9 and probability of false alarm (Pfa) below 1e-6. Since coherent detection requires phase information and, therefore is more computationally expensive, we adopt a noncoherent detection scheme. In addition, this demo assumes a free space environment.
% % % % %
Probability of detection Probability of false alarm Maximum unambiguous range Required range resolution Required target radar cross section
prop_speed = physconst('LightSpeed'); pulse_bw = prop_speed/(2*range_res); pulse_width = 1/pulse_bw; prf = prop_speed/(2*max_range); fs = 2*pulse_bw; hwav = phased.RectangularWaveform(...
% % % % %
Propagation speed Pulse bandwidth Pulse width Pulse repetition frequency Sampling rate
1 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
2 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
The ROC curves show that to satisfy the design goals of Pfa = 1e-6 and Pd = 0.9, the received signal's SNR must exceed 13 dB. This is a fairly high requirement and is not very practical. To make the radar system more feasible, we can use a pulse integration technique to reduce the required SNR. If we choose to integrate 10 pulses, the curve can be generated as
We can see that the required power has dropped to around 5 dB. Further reduction of SNR can be achieved by integrating more pulses, but the number of pulses available for integration is normally limited due to the motion of the target or the heterogeneity of the environment. The approach above reads out the SNR value from the curve, but it is often desirable to calculate only the required value. For the noncoherent detection scheme, the calculation of the required SNR is, in theory, quite complex. Fortunately, there are good approximations available, such as Albersheim's equation. Using Albersheim's equation, the required SNR can be derived as
3 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
5.2265e+03 Note that the resulting power is about 5 kw, which is very reasonable. In comparison, if we had not used the pulse integration technique, the resulting peak power would have been 33 kw, which is huge. With all this information, we can configure the transmitter.
hant = phased.IsotropicAntennaElement(... 'FrequencyRange',[5e9 15e9]); hantplatform = phased.Platform(... 'InitialPosition',[0; 0; 0],... 'Velocity',[0; 0; 0]);
With the antenna and the operating frequency, we define both the radiator and the collector.
System Simulation
Targets To test our radar's ability to detect targets, we must define the targets first. Let us assume that there are 3 stationary, non-fluctuating targets in space. Their positions and radar cross sections are given below.
4 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
htargetplatform{1} = phased.Platform(... 'InitialPosition',[2000.66; 0; 0]); htarget{2} = phased.RadarTarget(... 'MeanRCS',2.2,... 'OperatingFrequency',fc); htargetplatform{2} = phased.Platform(... 'InitialPosition',[3532.63; 0; 0]); htarget{3} = phased.RadarTarget(... 'MeanRCS',1.05,... 'OperatingFrequency',fc); htargetplatform{3} = phased.Platform(... 'InitialPosition',[3845.04; 0; 0]);
Propagation Environment To simulate the signal, we also need to define the propagation channel between the radar system and each target.
htargetchannel{1} = phased.FreeSpace(... 'SampleRate',fs,... 'TwoWayPropagation',true,... 'OperatingFrequency',fc); htargetchannel{2} = phased.FreeSpace(... 'SampleRate',fs,... 'TwoWayPropagation',true,... 'OperatingFrequency',fc); htargetchannel{3} = phased.FreeSpace(... 'SampleRate',fs,... 'TwoWayPropagation',true,... 'OperatingFrequency',fc);
Because this demo uses a monostatic radar system, the channels are set to simulate two way propagation delays. Signal Synthesis We are now ready to simulate the entire system. The synthesized signal is a data matrix with the fast time (time within each pulse) along each column and the slow time (time between pulses) along each row. To visualize the signal, it is helpful to define both the fast time grid and slow time grid.
5 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
[tgt_rng(n), tgt_ang(:,n)] = rangeangle(... tgt_pos(:,n), ant_pos); % Calculate range/angle tsig(:,n) = step(hradiator,... s,tgt_ang(:,n)); tsig(:,n) = step(htargetchannel{n},... tsig(:,n),ant_pos,tgt_pos(:,n)); rsig(:,n) = step(htarget{n},tsig(:,n)); end rsig = step(hcollector,rsig,tgt_ang); rx_pulses(:,m) = step(hrx,... rsig,~(tx_status>0)); end Range Detection
Detection Threshold The detector compares the signal power to a given threshold. In radar applications, the threshold is often chosen so that the Pfa is below a certain level. In this case, we assume the noise is white Gaussian and the detection is noncoherent. Since we are also using 10 pulses to do the pulse integration, the signal power threshold is given by
6 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
The threshold in these figures is for display purpose only. Note that the second and third target returns are much weaker than the first return because they are farther away from the radar. Therefore, the received signal power is range dependent and the threshold is unfair to targets located at different ranges. Matched Filter The matched filter offers a processing gain which improves the detection threshold. It convolves the received signal with a local, time-reversed, and conjugated copy of transmitted waveform. Therefore, we must specify the transmitted waveform when creating our matched filter. The received pulses are first passed through a matched filter to improve the SNR before doing pulse integration, threshold detection, etc.
rangedemoplotpulse(rx_pulses,threshold,... fast_time_grid,slow_time_grid,num_pulse_plot);
7 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
After the matched filter stage, the SNR is improved. However, because the received signal power is dependent on the range, the return of a close target is still much stronger than the return of a target farther away. Therefore, as the above figure shows, the noise from a close range bin also has a significant chance of surpassing the threshold and shadowing a target farther away. To ensure the threshold is fair to all the targets within the detectable range, we can use a time varying gain to compensate for the range dependent loss in the received echo. To compensate for the range dependent loss, we first calculate the range gates corresponding to each signal sample and then calculate the free space path loss corresponding to each range gate. Once that information is obtained, we apply a time varying gain to the received pulse so that the returns are as if from the same reference range (the maximum detectable range).
rangedemoplotpulse(rx_pulses,threshold,... fast_time_grid,slow_time_grid,num_pulse_plot);
8 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
The time varying gain operation results in a ramp in the noise floor. However, the target return is now range independent. A constant threshold can now be used for detection across the entire detectable range. Notice that at this stage, the threshold is above the maximum power level contained in each pulse. Therefore, nothing can be detected at this stage yet. We need to perform pulse integration to ensure the power of returned echoes from the targets can surpass the threshold while leaving the noise floor below the bar. This is expected since it is the pulse integration which allows us to use the lower power pulse train. Noncoherent Integration We can further improve the SNR by noncoherently integrating (video integration) the received pulses.
After the video integration stage, the data is ready for the final detection stage. It can be seen from the figure that all three echoes from the targets are above the threshold, and therefore can be detected.
9 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM
Phased Array System Toolbox - Designing a Basic Monostatic Pulse Rada... http://www.mathworks.com/products/phased-array/demos.html?file=/prod...
Range Detection Finally, the threshold detection is performed on the integrated pulses. The detection scheme identifies the peaks and then translates their positions into the ranges of the targets.
[~,range_detect] = findpeaks(rx_pulses,'MinPeakHeight',sqrt(threshold));
The true ranges and the detected ranges of the targets are shown below:
Note that these range estimates are only accurate up to the range resolution (50 m) that can be achieved by the radar system.
Summary
In this demo, we designed a radar system based on a set of given performance goals. From these performance goals, many design parameters of the radar system were calculated. The demo also showed how to use the designed radar to perform a range detection task. In this demo, the radar used a rectangular waveform. Interested readers can refer to Waveform Design to Improve Performance of an Existing Radar System for an example using a chirp waveform.
10 of 10
3/8/2012 2:39 PM