Low-rate sampling technique for range-windowed radar/sonar using nonlinear frequency modulation

This paper proposes a new radar/sonar processing architecture that enables a low-rate time-sampling rate while still producing a high-resolution range profile over a narrow range-window. This new architecture generalizes the conventional “stretch processing” architecture (which employs linear frequency modulated (LFM) waveforms that suffer from high range-sidelobes), to nonlinear frequency modulated (NLFM) waveforms, which can lower the range-sidelobes without tapering. Computational results demonstrate both the estimation efficacy and the time-sampling efficiency of the proposed scheme.