Parameters estimation of precession cone target based on micro-Doppler spectrum

Mechanical vibration or rotation of a target or structures on the target may induce additional frequency modulations on the returned radar signal which generate sidebands about the target’s Doppler frequency, called the micro-Doppler effect. The micro-Doppler can be regarded as a unique signature and provides valuable information for the motion parameters extraction and the target recognition of precession warhead targets. To solve the issue of estimating the motion parameters of those targets, a new method based on the m-D spectrum of the top and the bottom of the cone is proposed in this paper. In this method, the m-D features of the cone target are firstly extracted by calculating the first-order moments of the time–frequency distribution of the echo signal. Then, the motion parameters of the target are roughly estimated by the Fourier transformation of the m-D curve. Based on the rough estimation, the search method is employed to estimate the motion parameters of the cone target precisely. The validity of the proposed method is verified by the analysis data.