Whitening Filter for Mainlobe Interference
Suppression in Distributed Array Radar
Honggang Zhang, Jian Luo, Xinliang Chen
*
, Quanhua Liu, Tao Zeng
Beijing Key Laboratory of Embedded Real-time Information Processing Technology,
Radar Research Laboratory, School of Information and Electronics,
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
chenxinliang@bit.edu.cn
Abstract: This paper proposes a mainlobe interference
suppression method based on whitening filter for distributed
array radar (DAR). Due to the equivalent large aperture of
DAR, it is possible to cancel the mainlobe interference
without target signal suppression. For narrowband signal, the
time domain whitening filter (TD-WF) is used. As for the
wideband signal or large aperture DAR, the target signals
arriving at each antenna may have the envelope migration
problem, thus the frequency domain whitening filter (FD-WF)
is utilized in order to avoid this problem. In addition, a
mainlobe interference suppression experiment is carried out in
the scenario involving an S-band experimental radar system
and an S-band jammer. The measured data is processed
employing the proposed method, and the result verifies the
effectiveness of this algorithm.
Keywords: distributed array radar; whitening filter; mainlobe
interference suppression; envelope migration; experiment
I. INTRODUCTION
The electromagnetic interference environment is increasingly
complex in the modern battle scenario, thus radar will face
severe troubles, such as reducing of radar coverage and
precision, even failing to work. The sidelobe interference
suppression method is relatively mature and widely used in
phased antenna array radars [1]. The performance of sidelobe
jamming cancellation method in wideband phased array radar
using stretch processing is also discussed [2]. Although these
methods can effectively suppress the sidelobe interference,
they will distort and offset the mainlobe peak in presence of
mainlobe interference.
Recently the mainlobe interference cancellation draws more
and more attention. A mainlobe interference suppression
system based on mismatched filtering is introduced [3]. A
technique of mainlobe interference suppression for
ground-based radar based on a large aperture auxiliary array is
proposed [4]. It could form a deep notch in the direction of
interference, thus suppressing the mainlobe interference
effectively. A number of different waveforms transmitted with
arbitrary phases are utilized in order to cancel the mainlobe
interference in multisite radar systems and multi-input
multi-output (MIMO) radars [5]. A mainlobe interference
suppression technique based on eigenprojection algorithm and
beam pattern similarity constraints is proposed [6].
Inspired by the above methods, this paper proposes a mainlobe
interference suppression method based on whitening filter for
DAR. The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces
the mainlobe interference trouble that radar faces. Section 2
gives the signal model of DAR under the mainlobe interference
condition. Section 3 focuses on the mainlobe interference
suppression method based on whitening filter. Firstly, the
concept of TD-WF is proposed, then the FD-WF is presented
to resolve the envelope migration problem brought by the
wideband signal or large aperture array. Section 4 demonstrates
the mainlobe interference suppression experiment utilizing an
S-band experimental radar system and an S-band jammer, and
then processes the measured data in order to verify the
effectiveness of the proposed method. Finally, section 5
summarizes this paper.
II. SIGNAL MODEL
Assume that DAR consists of a transmitting antenna and N
receiving antennas. The position of each receiving antenna is
d = [d
1
,d
2
,,d
N
], and d
1
= 0. When the echo contains the target
signal, the interference signal and noise, the received signal of
the nth antenna can be expressed as
sc
n n n n
x t s t c t w t
(1)
where, s(t) is the target signal, c(t) is the interference signal,
and
are the time
delay of the target and the interference in the nth antenna,
and
are the time delay of the target and the interference to
the first antenna,
0
is the target direction,
1
is the interference
direction, c is the speed of light, t is time, and n = 1,2,,N.
w
n
(t) is the independent complex Gaussian white noise, whose
variances are all
. In addition, the target signal, interference
signal and noise are uncorrelated.
III. WHITENING FILTER FOR MAINLOBE INTERFERENCE
SUPPRESSION
A. Time Domain Whitening Filter
Consider radar transmits narrowband signal, thus the time
delay differences of target to each antenna can be neglected.
While the echo contains the target signal and noise only, the
above signal model can be simplified as
00
t s t t
x a w
(2)
This work was supported by the Chang Jiang Scholars Programme under
Grants T2012122, 111 Project of China under Grants B14010 and the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grants 61301189.