Alternative signal processing of complementary waveform returns for range sidelobe suppression.

Highlights • An alternative pointwise addition processor (PAP) is proposed for Golay compelementary waveforms. • The PAP performs similar to the pointwise minimization processor (PMP) put forward in the early work. • Theoretical analysis and simulations illustrate the tradeoff of PAP and PMP in terms of range sidelobe suppression and target detection probability. Abstract It has been an important technique to reduce sidelobes for processing nonzero Doppler target returns under Golay complementary waveforms. While the pointwise minimization processor in our early work shows an enhanced performance on the suppression of range sidelobes compared with existing approaches, it has a reduced detection probability to target with location uncertainties. In this paper, we present an alternative processing method which combines the radar returns in two separated pairs of Golay complementary waveforms through a pointwise addition processor. Our simulation result shows that this alternative method has a similar performance to that of the pointwise minimum processor for range sidelobes suppression and computational complexity but results in an improved target detection probability, with an acceptable decrease on the peak to peak-sidelobe ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]