Estimating the precession angle of ballistic targets in midcourse based on HRRP sequence

Midcourse phase is the most important phase for ballistic defence. Precession is the inherent feature of a spinning war-head and the precession parameters can be used to discriminate the warhead from decoys. In this paper, we propose a method utilizing the vibration of two scattering centerspsila projection distance on high resolution range profile (HRRR) sequence to estimate the precession angle of midcourse target after analyzing the characteristics of warheadspsila precession. Simulations are given and the results show that the presented method is effective and applicable. Compared with methods based on RCS sequence, this method requires no information of the targetspsila RCS and hence it is more practicable and stable.