A Software-Defined Radar for Low-Altitude Slow-Moving Small Targets Detection Using Transmit Beam Control

Low-altitude slow-moving small (LSS) targets are defined as flying at altitudes less than 1000 m with speeds less than 55 m/s and a radar crossing-section (RCS) less than 2 m2. The detection performance of ground-based radar using the LSS target detection technique can be significantly deteriorated by the diversity of LSS targets, background clutter, and the occurrence of false alarms caused by multipath interference. To address the LSS target detection problem, we have devised a novel two-dimensional electronic scanning active phased array radar system that is implemented in the software-defined radar architecture and propose a transmit beam control algorithm based on the low peak-to-average ratio (PAPR). Meanwhile, we devised a flexible arbitrary radar waveform generator to adapt to complex environmental situations. Field experiment results effectively demonstrate that our radar can be used to detect LSS targets. Moreover, an ablation experiment was conducted to verify the role played by transmit beam control and adaptive waveform optimization and generation in improving the system performance.