The interrupted‐sampling repeater jamming (ISRJ) is coherent with an emitted signal, and significantly limits radar's ability to detect, track and recognise targets. This study focuses on the research of ISRJ suppression for linear frequency modulation radars. A new band pass filter design method based on time frequency (TF) analysis is proposed. A function named ‘max‐TF’ is constructed from the TF energy distribution of the de‐chirped signal, reflecting the changes of the maximum signal component amplitude with respect to time. Based on the ‘max‐TF’ function, jamming‐free signal segments are automatically and accurately extracted to generate the filter, which is smoothed subsequently. After filtering, jamming signal peaks in pulse compression results are suppressed while real targets are retained simultaneously. Comparing with the state‐of‐the‐art filtering method, the proposed method has improved jamming suppression ability and extended the feasible scope of signal‐to‐noise ratio and jamming‐to‐signal ratio conditions. Simulations have validated the improvements and demonstrated how the parameters affect performance. The average signal to jamming improvement and average radar detection rate of the proposed method is about 7.4 dB and 23% higher than those of the state‐of‐the‐art filtering method, respectively. The direction of further works is inferred.
1 April 2021 in IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
In order to improve the efficiency and adaptability of cognitive radar jamming decision-making, a fusion algorithm (Ant-QL) based on ant colony and Q-Learning is proposed in this paper. The algorithm does not rely on a priori information and enhances adaptability through real-time interactions between the jammer and the target radar. At the same time, it can be applied to single jammer and multiple jammer countermeasure scenarios with high jamming effects. First, traditional Q-Learning and DQN algorithms are discussed, and a radar jamming decision-making model is built for the simulation verification of each algorithm. Then, an improved Q-Learning algorithm is proposed to address the shortcomings of both algorithms. By introducing the pheromone mechanism of ant colony algorithms in Q-Learning and using the -greedy algorithm to balance the contradictory relationship between exploration and exploitation, the algorithm greatly avoids falling into a local optimum, thus accelerating the convergence speed of the algorithm with good stability and robustness in the convergence process. In order to better adapt to the cluster countermeasure environment in future battlefields, the algorithm and model are extended to cluster cooperative jamming decision-making. We map each jammer in the cluster to an intelligent ant searching for the optimal path, and multiple jammers interact with each other to obtain information. During the process of confrontation, the method greatly improves the convergence speed and stability and reduces the need for hardware and power resources of the jammer. Assuming that the number of jammers is three, the experimental simulation results of the convergence speed of the Ant-QL algorithm improve by 85.4%, 80.56% and 72% compared with the Q-Learning, DQN and improved Q-Learning algorithms, respectively. During the convergence process, the Ant-QL algorithm is very stable and efficient, and the algorithm complexity is low. After the algorithms converge, the average response times of the four algorithms are 6.99 × 10−4 s, 2.234 × 10−3 s, 2.21 × 10−4 s and 1.7 × 10−4 s, respectively. The results show that the improved Q-Learning algorithm and Ant-QL algorithm also have more advantages in terms of average response time after convergence.
Micro-motion parameters extraction is crucial in recognizing ballistic missiles with a wideband radar. It is known that the phase-derived range (PDR) method can provide a sub-wavelength level accuracy. However, it is sensitive and unstable when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is low. In this paper, an improved PDR method is proposed to reduce the impacts of low SNRs. First, the high range resolution profile (HRRP) is divided into a series of segments so that each segment contains a single scattering point. Then, the peak values of each segment are viewed as non-stationary signals, which are further decomposed into a series of intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) with different energy, using the ensemble empirical mode decomposition with the complementary adaptive noise (EEMDCAN) method. In the EEMDCAN decomposition, positive and negative adaptive noise pairs are added to each IMF layer to effectively eliminate the mode-mixing phenomenon that exists in the original empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method. An energy threshold is designed to select proper IMFs to reconstruct the envelop for high estimation accuracy and low noise effects. Finally, the least-square algorithm is used to do the ambiguous phases unwrapping to obtain the micro-curve, which can be further used to estimate the micro-motion parameters of the warhead. Simulation results show that the proposed method performs well with SNR at −5 dB with an accuracy level of sub-wavelength.
In the past few decades, the demand for reliable and robust systems capable of monitoring unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increased significantly due to the security threats from its wide applications. During UAVs surveillance, birds are a typical confuser target. Therefore, discriminating UAVs from birds is critical for successful non-cooperative UAVs surveillance. Micro-Doppler signature (m-DS) reflects the scattering characteristics of micro-motion targets and has been utilized for many radar automatic target recognition (RATR) tasks. In this paper, the authors deploy local mean decomposition (LMD) to separate the m-DS of the micro-motion parts from the body returns of the UAVs and birds. After the separation, rotating parts will be obtained without the interference of the body components, and the m-DS features can also be revealed more clearly, which is conducive to feature extraction. What is more, there are some problems in using m-DS only for target classification. Firstly, extracting only m-DS features makes incomplete use of information in the spectrogram. Secondly, m-DS can be observed only for metal rotor UAVs, or large UAVs when they are closer to the radar. Lastly, m-DS cannot be observed when the size of the birds is small, or when it is gliding. The authors thus propose an algorithm for RATR of UAVs and interfering targets under a new system of L band staring radar. In this algorithm, to make full use of the information in the spectrogram and supplement the information in exceptional situations, m-DS, movement, and energy aggregation features of the target are extracted from the spectrogram. On the benchmark dataset, the proposed algorithm demonstrates a better performance than the state-of-the-art algorithms. More specifically, the equal error rate (EER) proposed is 2.56% lower than the existing methods, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.
With the rapid development of autonomous driving and robotics applications in recent years, visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) has become a hot research topic. The majority of visual SLAM systems relies on the assumption of scene rigidity, which may not always hold true in real applications. In dynamic environments, SLAM systems, without accounting for dynamic objects, will easily fail to estimate the camera pose. Some existing methods attempt to address this issue by simply excluding the dynamic features lying in moving objects. But this may lead to a shortage of features for tracking. To tackle this problem, we propose OTE-SLAM, an object tracking enhanced visual SLAM system, which not only tracks the camera motion, but also tracks the movement of dynamic objects. Furthermore, we perform joint optimization of both the camera pose and object 3D position, enabling a mutual benefit between visual SLAM and object tracking. The results of experiences demonstrate that the proposed approach improves the accuracy of the SLAM system in challenging dynamic environments. The improvements include a maximum reduction in both absolute trajectory error and relative trajectory error by 22% and 33%, respectively.