Adaptive Range Gate Design in A Stepped-frequency Outdoor RCS Instrumentation

An efficient method for range tracking in a stepped-frequency outdoor radar cross section (RCS) measurement system is presented. The target´s coarse resolution range profile was used to determine the delay time between the transmitted pulse and the range gate. Since the target´s profile can be obtained by doing inverse discrete Fourier transform (IDFT) to the samples of the target´s echo, the range gate is able to track the target automatically and there´s no need of additional complex hardware for range tracking. A novel solution on velocity compensation is discussed. Considerations on the related parameters are also involved and studied