An MTI Technique for Processing Radar Measurements of a Waking Reentry Body

A processing technique based on pulse-cancellation techniques familiar in moving target indicator (MTI) radar is proposed for separating (in Doppler) echoes of a reentry body traveling at hypersonic velocities from those of its lower velocity turbulent wake appearing in the same range cell. The cancellation technique is implemented by forming the sum of the products of binomial weighting coefficients of alternating sign with the complex echoes of a small number of closely spaced transmitted coherent pulses; thereby, in effect, synthesizing a digital canceler. The ability of the two-and three-pulse canceler to estimate body RCS in the presence of attached wake is demonstrated by employing coherent burst data collected by the AMRAD radar for a mission flown at the White Sands Missile Range. Estimates of body RCS obtained from the two-and three-pulse canceler compare favorably to the corresponding estimates obtained from a 30-pulse Doppler periodogram for this mission. Expressions for both the achievable wake rejection ratio and the mean and standard deviation of the body power estimate of the N-pulse canceler are derived as a function of the wake parameters, assuming Gaussian wake statistics.