Accurate estimation of the time delay in radar target range profile reconstruction using time-frequency and superresolution algorithms

The accurate estimation of the time delay is very important for obtaining good classification results when range profiles are used as feature vectors for radar target recognition. The inverse Fourier transform of the data in the frequency domain, which is classically used to obtain the target range response, is limited in resolution by the available frequency band. Two other approaches are then discussed in this paper in order to overcome the limitations of the Fourier method and to estimate the range profile peak locations with superior accuracy: a wavelet packet decomposition based technique and a class of subspace eigenanalysis based methods. The main features of the two approaches are highlighted through computer simulations on noisy synthetic and real data