Radar tracking performance when sensing and processing compressive measurements

Radar tracking performance is improved when using waveforms at high delay-Doppler resolution with concentrated ambiguity functions. High resolution measurement acquisition and processing, however, requires high rate sampling and intensive processing. Alternatively, compressive sensing and processing can be used to significantly reduce data rates with no loss in resolution. The drawback is, however, that using compressive measurements increases ambiguity function sidelobes and thus tracking error. In this paper, compressive sensing and processing is applied to single target tracking. The effect of compressive sensing and processing on the ambiguity function sidelobes is examined. Moreover, estimation using compressively sampled and processed Björck CAZAC sequences is shown to be improved over estimation using linear frequency modulated waveforms sampled at the Nyquist rate. This shows that low-rate acquisition and processing maintains reliable tracking performance at high resolution, while simplifying the receiver and reducing computational expense.