Motion feature extraction for stepped frequency radar based on Hough transform

The high resolution range profile can be obtained through coherent pulse compression processing in every coherent processing interval (CPI) for stepped frequency radars (SFR). The radar observation time can be divided into multiple CPIs. By utilising the temporal information inherent to a sequence of these range profiles, a time-range image containing the target motion information can be synthesised. Through analyses of the point scatterer targets with the radial uniform motion, radial uniformly accelerated motion, rotation and vibration, this study indicates that there is a certain correlation between the target motion features and the time-range image features in the limited observation time. Based on this result, we propose a motion feature extraction method for SFR without any assistant information using the conventional and well-known feature extraction tool, Hough transform. The authors give detailed analyses and explanation of this method, and verify them by outfield experiments, demonstrate the motion feature extraction results using real radar data. The proposed method enables the motion feature extraction through space non-coherent integration, which fully utilises the radar data information under low signal-to-noise ratio conditions.