Concept of Complex-Valued Parametric Pulse Models

Abstract

In pulse-based radar systems, the knowledge of certain parameters of the received radar pulse is of great importance. We introduce a complex-valued parametric pulse model by extending a real-valued pulse signal into the complex plane. A modulation angle parameter unique to the complex representation gives an additional degree of freedom and can be used to model the basic shape of the pulse, thus lifting the conventional restriction to fixed pulse shapes in real-valued correlation techniques. As physical signals are real valued, the imaginary part of the complex signal is calculated by using the Hilbert transformation. Parameter estimation is based on the complex-valued continuous wavelet transform. The main advantages of this concept are demonstrated on synthetic data and verified on ultrawideband pulse radar measurements.