Rapidly Moving Target Parameter Estimation Using Phased Array Radars

Conventional approach to phased array architecture relies on a subarray configuration to meet the requirements of large-scale systems. The digital array has been the highlight of some recent phased array system architectures and algorithms. This is possible because of the many advances in some key technology enablers. On one end, analog to digital converters have achieved a reasonably fast sampling rate. With that comes a reasonably simpler receiver front-end, which also reduces system cost. On the other end, the computing infrastructure provides the much-needed performance to process the amount of data resulting from such a system architecture. Recently, a new approach was proposed to extract additional information from a moving point source. In that development, we proposed an algorithm to estimate the direction of arrival and angular velocities (DOAV) of a moving source impinging a signal on a passive array system. This formulation was possible by modeling the movement of the target in a short observation interval, and such a formulation gave rise to a multi-parameter estimation problem. In this presentation, we investigate how well the proposed approach would work in the case of a monostatic radar. The feasibility and the application of the approach in radar are presented in this paper as a new approach to estimate simultaneously range, radial velocity, and respective angular velocity of the target.