Ballistic missile micro-Doppler parameter estimation based on multi-section signals

Spin motion of the ballistic missile (BM) with empennages caused micro-Doppler modulations in radar returns, which was quite an important characteristic in BM radar target recognition systems. Early-warning radar (EWR) sometimes had to observe targets in time segmented due to the demands of multi-object-tracking and multi-tasking. While there were many difficulties to extract feature parameters from the noncoherent multi-section signals. The paper modelled the multisection radar signals of the spinning BM firstly. According to the characteristics of the multi-section signals, the method of Radon-pseudo-STFT was proposed to estimate the radial acceleration using the multi-section signals. After the acceleration compensation, the micro-Doppler modulation period was extracted based on the method of complex envelops unbiased autocorrelation.