A Motion Compensation Method for Stepped-Frequency Radar Based on Joint Chirp-Fourier Transform

To address the problem of accurately estimating and compensating motion parameters in stepped-frequency radar imaging, a method of joint Chirp-Fourier transform based on inter pulse and intra pulse was proposed. After mixing a vibration signal, the target echo can be regarded as a linear FM signal, which can be employed coherent integration after using Chirp-Fourier transform. Through accurate estimation of target velocity by searching the chirp rates, the target motion compensation can be achieved at low SNR. Because of IFFT operation in frequency domain, the algorithm can operate efficiently. The effectiveness and practicality of the method are finally verified by the simulations.