Hybrid-LFM signal design and detection performance analysis for formation-flying satellite radar system

Formation-flying satellite radars, as a kind of MIMO radars with widely-separated antennas, is a new technique developed recently. It offers the potential for diversity gain and spatial resolution gain through transmitting the orthogonal waveforms. In order to obtain diversity gain and spatial resolution gain and improve the detection performance, a hybrid-LFM signal for formation-flying satellite radar is proposed in this paper. The hybrid-LFM signal is composed of several sub-pulses with different frequency slope. In this model, the bandwidth of each sub-pulse and the frequency slope interval are important. Firstly, we investigate the signal processing of satellites´ echo and present an efficient implementation of formation-flying satellite radar system. Then, the orthogonal performance of the hybrid-LFM signals and the detection performance of formation-flying satellite radar system are analyzed. In the end, we draw the conclusion from simulations that not only the Hybrid-LFM signals have good orthogonal performance, but also the formation-flying satellite radar system with hybrid-LFM signals can obtain better detection performance than that with OFDM-LFM signals.