Extensions of sub-Nyquist radar: Reduced time-on-target and cognitive radar

Pulse Doppler radars measure both the targets distance to the transceiver and their radial velocity, through the estimation of the time delays and Doppler frequencies, respectively. This digital processing is traditionally performed on samples of the received signal at its Nyquist rate, which can be prohibitively high. Overcoming the rate bottleneck, sub-Nyquist sampling methods have been proposed that break the link between radar signal bandwidth and sampling rate. In this work, we extend these methods in two directions. First, we allow for a reduced time-on-target by transmitting non-uniformly spaced pulses. Second, we pave the way to sub-Nyquist cognitive radar by considering transmitted and received pulses with dynamic support composed of several narrow bands. Both software and hardware simulations demonstrate reduced time-on-target and dynamic transmitted signal support.