A fast Wigner Hough transform algorithm for parameter estimation of low probability of intercept radar polyphase coded signals

Abstract

Abstract It is difficult for a receiver to intercept the signals from a radar system that can emit low probability of intercept (LPI) polyphase coded signals. The traditional Wigner Hough transform (WHT) algorithm requires a large amount of computation and takes a long time to estimate the parameters of the LPI radar polyphase coded signals. To address this problem, an iterative angle search (IAS) algorithm, which when used in combination with the WHT algorithm significantly reduces the computational cost is proposed. When the signal‐to‐noise ratio is in the range of −4 to 20 dB, the carrier frequency, number of subcodes, and number of cycles of the carrier frequency per subcode of five polyphase coded signals, namely, Frank, P1, P2, P3, and P4, are accurately estimated in simulation experiments. Based on the selected IAS algorithm parameters, the estimation accuracy of the proposed method is the same as that of the traditional WHT algorithm. However, the operation time is only 5.14% of that of the traditional method. The IAS algorithm has certain application prospects. Experiments indicate that the proposed algorithm provides excellent performance and can rapidly and accurately estimate the parameters of LPI polyphase codes.

Keywords

• iterative angle search
• low probability of intercept radar
• modulation parameter estimation
• polyphase coded signals
• Wigner Hough transform