We propose a method for synthesizing high range resolution profiles (HRRP) using stepped frequency waveform (SFW) processing. Conventional SFW radars sweep over the available spectrum linearly to achieve high resolution from their instantaneous bandwidth. However, they suffer from strong range-Doppler coupling and coexisting spectral interference. Prior works are able to mitigate only one of these drawbacks. We present a new \textit{ra}ndom \textit{s}parse \textit{ste}p-frequency \textit{r}adar (RaSSteR) waveform that consumes less spectral resources without loss of range resolution and estimates both high-resolution range and Doppler by exploiting sparse recovery techniques. In the presence of interference, the operation with the new waveform is made cognitive by focusing available transmit power only in the few transmit bands. Our theoretical analyses show that, even while using fewer carriers in the available bandwidth, RaSSteR has identical recovery guarantees as the standard random stepped frequency (RSF) waveform. Numerical experiments demonstrate performance enhancements with RaSSteR over state-of-the-art such as SFW, RSF, conventional pulse-compression-based pulse Doppler radar, and sub-Nyquist radar. In addition, the target hit rate of RaSSteR in the presence of strong interference is 30% more than conventional RSF.
We integrate sparse radar data into a monocular depth estimation model and introduce a novel preprocessing method for reducing the sparseness and limited field of view provided by radar. We explore the intrinsic error of different radar modalities and show our proposed method results in more data points with reduced error. We further propose a novel method for estimating dense depth maps from monocular 2D images and sparse radar measurements using deep learning based on the deep ordinal regression network by Fu et al. Radar data are integrated by first converting the sparse 2D points to a heig…
Random stepped frequency (RSF) radar, which transmits random-frequency pulses, can suppress the range ambiguity, improve convert detection, and possess excellent electronic counter-countermeasures (ECCM) ability [1]. In this paper, we apply a sparse recovery method to estimate the range and Doppler of targets. We also propose a cognitive mechanism for RSF radar to further enhance the performance of the sparse recovery method. The carrier frequencies of transmitted pulses are adaptively designed in response to the observed circumstance. We investigate the criterion to design carrier frequencies…
Dual-function radar communications (DFRC) systems have recently been proposed to enable the coexistence of radar and wireless communications, which in turn alleviates the increased spectrum congestion crisis. In this paper, we consider the problem of sparse transmit array design for DFRC systems by antenna selection where same or different antennas are assigned to different functions. We consider three different types of DFRC systems which implement different simultaneous beamformers associated with single and different sparse arrays with shared aperture. We utilize the array configuration as …
In this paper we report the first airborne experiments of sparse microwave imaging, conducted in September 2013 and May 2014, using our prototype sparse microwave imaging radar system. This is the first reported imaging radar system and airborne experiment that specially designed for sparse microwave imaging. Sparse microwave imaging is a novel concept of radar imaging, it is mainly the combination of traditional radar imaging technology and newly developed sparse signal processing theory, achieving benefits in both improving the imaging quality of current microwave imaging systems and designi…
Recent progress in compressive sensing states the importance of exploiting intrinsic structures in sparse signal reconstruction. In this letter, we propose a Markov random field (MRF) prior in conjunction with fast iterative shrinkagethresholding algorithm (FISTA) for image reconstruction. The MRF prior is used to represent the support of sparse signals with clustered nonzero coefficients. The proposed approach is applied to the inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) imaging problem. Simulations and experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance advantages of this approach i…
Spectrum congestion and competition over frequency bandwidth could be alleviated by deploying dual-function radar-communications systems, where the radar platform presents itself as a system of opportunity to secondary communication functions. In this paper, we propose a new technique for communication information embedding into the emission of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar using sparse antenna array configurations. The phases induced by antenna displacements in a sensor array are unique, which makes array configuration feasible for symbol embedding. We also exploit the fact that…
Sparse array design aided by emerging fast sensor switching technologies can lower the overall system overhead by reducing the number of expensive transceiver chains. In this paper, we examine the active sparse array design enabling the maximum signal to interference plus noise ratio (MaxSINR) beamforming at the MIMO radar receiver. The proposed approach entails an entwined design, i.e., jointly selecting the optimum transmit and receive sensor locations for accomplishing MaxSINR receive beamforming. Specifically, we consider a co-located multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar platform wi…
In this paper, we investigate the application of continuous sparse signal reconstruction algorithms for the estimation of the ranges and speeds of multiple moving targets using an FMCW radar. Conventionally, to be reconstructed, continuous sparse signals are approximated by a discrete representation. This discretization of the signal's parameter domain leads to mismatches with the actual signal. While increasing the grid density mitigates these errors, it dramatically increases the algorithmic complexity of the reconstruction. To overcome this issue, we propose a fast greedy algorithm for off-…
Mutual interference in automotive radar scenarios is going to become a major concern as the density of vehicles with radar sensors in the roads increases. The present work tackles the problem of frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) to FMCW and continuous wave interference. In this context, we propose a signal processing technique to blindly identify and remove interference by using the fast Orthogonal Matching Pursuit (OMP) algorithm to project the interference signals in a reduced chirplet basis, and separate it from the target signal with minimal loss of information. Significant reduct…
Cognitive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar is capable of adjusting system parameters adaptively by sensing and learning in complex dynamic environment. Beamforming performance of MIMO radar is guided by both beamforming weight coefficients and the transceiver configuration. We propose a cognitive-driven MIMO array design where both the beamforming weights and the transceiver configuration are adaptively and concurrently optimized under different environmental conditions. The perception-action cycle involves data collection of full virtual array, covariance reconstruction and joint d…
FAR has improved anti-jamming performance over traditional pulse-Doppler radars under complex electromagnetic circumstances. To reconstruct the range-Doppler information in FAR, many compressed sensing (CS) methods including standard and block sparse recovery have been applied. In this paper, we study phase transitions of range-Doppler recovery in FAR using CS. In particular, we derive closed-form phase transition curves associated with block sparse recovery and complex Gaussian matrices, based on prior results of standard sparse recovery under real Gaussian matrices. We further approximate th…
The problem of sparse array design for dual-function radar-communications is investigated. Our goal is to design a sparse array which can simultaneously shape desired beam responses and serve multiple downlink users with the required signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio levels. Besides, we also take into account the limitation of the radiated power by each antenna. The problem is formulated as a quadratically constrained quadratic program with a joint-sparsity-promoting regularization, which is NP-hard. The resulting problem is solved by the consensus alternating direction method of multipl…
In the practical radar with multiple antennas, the antenna imperfections degrade the system performance. In this paper, the problem of estimating the direction of arrival (DOA) in multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) radar system with unknown mutual coupling effect between antennas is investigated. To exploit the target sparsity in the spatial domain, the compressed sensing (CS)-based methods have been proposed by discretizing the detection area and formulating the dictionary matrix, so an \emph{off-grid} gap is caused by the discretization processes. In this paper, different from the pre…
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar has several advantages with respect to the traditional radar array systems in terms of performance and flexibility. However, in order to achieve high angular resolution, a MIMO radar requires a large number of transmit and receive antennas, which increases hardware design and computational complexities. Although spatial compressive sensing (CS) has been recently considered for a pulsed-waveform MIMO radar with sparse random arrays, such methods for the frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar remain largely unexplored. In this context, we pro…
We propose radar image classification via pseudo-Zernike moments based sparse representations. We exploit invariance properties of pseudo-Zernike moments to augment redundancy in the sparsity representative dictionary by introducing auxiliary atoms. We employ complex radar signatures. We prove the validity of our proposed methods on the publicly available MSTAR dataset.
The design of a conical phased array antenna for air traffic control (ATC) radar systems is addressed in this work. The array, characterized by a fully digital beam-forming (DBF) architecture, is composed of equal vertical modules consisting of linear sparse arrays able to generate on receive multiple instantaneous beams pointing along different elevation directions. The synthesis problem is cast in the Compressive Sensing (CS) framework to achieve the best trade-off between the antenna complexity (i.e., minimum number of array elements and/or radio frequency components) and radiation performa…
Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) radar is known for its superiority over conventional radar due to its antenna and waveform diversity. Although higher angular resolution, improved parameter identifiability, and better target detection are achieved, the hardware costs (due to multiple transmitters and multiple receivers) and high energy consumption (multiple pulses) limit the usage of MIMO radars in large scale networks. On one hand, higher angle and velocity estimation accuracy is required, but on the other hand, a lower number of antennas/pulses is desirable. To achieve such a compromise…
Mm-wave radars have recently gathered significant attention as a means to track human movement and identify subjects from their gait characteristics. A widely adopted method to perform the identification is the extraction of the micro-Doppler signature of the targets, which is computationally demanding in case of co-existing multiple targets within the monitored physical space. Such computational complexity is the main problem of state-of-the-art approaches, and makes them inapt for real-time use. In this work, we present an end-to-end, low-complexity but highly accurate method to track and id…
In this paper, the interference mitigation for Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar system with a dechirping receiver is investigated. After dechirping operation, the scattered signals from targets result in beat signals, i.e., the sum of complex exponentials while the interferences lead to chirp-like short pulses. Taking advantage of these different time and frequency features between the useful signals and the interferences, the interference mitigation is formulated as an optimization problem: a sparse and low-rank decomposition of a Hankel matrix constructed by lifting the measu…
We consider a joint multiple-antenna radar-communications system in a co-existence scenario. Contrary to conventional applications, wherein at least the radar waveform and communications channel are known or estimated \textit{a priori}, we investigate the case when the channels and transmit signals of both systems are unknown. In radar applications, this problem arises in multistatic or passive systems, where transmit signal is not known. Similarly, highly dynamic vehicular or mobile communications may render prior estimates of wireless channel unhelpful. In particular, the radar signal reflec…
MIMO transmit arrays allow for flexible design of the transmit beampattern. However, the large number of elements required to achieve certain performance using uniform linear arrays (ULA) maybe be too costly. This motivated the need for thinned arrays by appropriately selecting a small number of elements so that the full array beampattern is preserved. In this paper, we propose Learn-to-Select (L2S), a novel machine learning model for selecting antennas from a dense ULA employing a combination of multiple Softmax layers constrained by an orthogonalization criterion. The proposed approach can b…
A method is developed for sequential azimuth and height estimation of small objects at far distances in front of a moving vehicle using coherent or mutually incoherent MIMO arrays. The model considers phases and amplitudes for near-field multipath signals produced by specular non-diffusive ground-reflections where the reflection phase shift and power attenuation due to the interaction with the ground is assumed unknown. Group-sparsity allows combining measurements along the trajectory of the vehicle provided that the road is flat as well as measurements from multiple incoherent sensors at diff…
Randomized Stepped Frequency Radar (RSFR) is very attractive for tasks under complex electromagnetic environment. Due to the synthetic high range resolution in RSRFs, a target usually occupies a series of range cells and is called an extended target. To reconstruct the range-Doppler information in a RSFR, previous studies based on sparse recovery mainly exploit the sparsity of the target scene but do not adequately address the extended-target characteristics, which exist in many practical applications. Block sparsity, which combines the sparsity and the target extension, better characterizes a…
Complex ADMM-Net, a complex-valued neural network architecture inspired by the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), is designed for interference removal in super-resolution stepped frequency radar angle-range-doppler imaging. Tailored to an uncooperative scenario wherein a MIMO radar shares spectrum with communications, the ADMM-Net recovers the radar image---which is assumed to be sparse---and simultaneously removes the communication interference, which is modeled as sparse in the frequency domain owing to spectrum underutilization. The scenario motivates an $\ell_1$-minimizati…
Millimeter-wave (mmW) radar is widely applied to advanced autopilot assistance systems. However, its small antenna aperture causes a low imaging resolution. In this paper, a new distributed mmW radar system is designed to solve this problem. It forms a large sparse virtual planar array to enlarge the aperture, using multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) processing. However, in this system, traditional imaging methods cannot apply to the sparse array. Therefore, we also propose a 3D super-resolution imaging method specifically for this system in this paper. The proposed method consists of t…
We present a compressive radar design that combines multitone linear frequency modulated (LFM) waveforms in the transmitter with a classical stretch processor and sub-Nyquist sampling in the receiver. The proposed compressive illumination scheme has fewer random elements resulting in reduced storage and complexity for implementation than previously proposed compressive radar designs based on stochastic waveforms. We analyze this illumination scheme for the task of a joint range-angle of arrival estimation in the multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) radar system. We present recovery guarantees f…
This paper considers the design of tunable decision schemes capable of rejecting with high probability mismatched signals embedded in Gaussian interference with unknown covariance matrix. To this end, a sparse recovery technique is exploited to enhance the resolution at which the target angle of arrival is estimated with the objective to obtain high-selective detectors. The outcomes of this estimation procedure are used to devise detection architectures relying on either the twostage design paradigm or heuristic design procedures based upon the generalized likelihood ratio test. Remarkably, th…
We analyze synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging of complex ground scenes that contain both stationary and moving targets. In the usual SAR acquisition scheme, we consider ways to preprocess the data so as to separate the contributions of the moving targets from those due to stationary background reflectors. Both components of the data, that is, reflections from stationary and moving targets, are considered as signal that is needed for target imaging and tracking, respectively. The approach we use is to decompose the data matrix into a low rank and a sparse part. This decomposition enables us…
We investigate the problem of sparse target detection from widely distributed multistatic \textit{Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave} (FMCW) radar systems (using chirp modulation). Unlike previous strategies (\emph{e.g.}, developed for FMCW or distributed multistatic radars), we propose a generic framework that scales well in terms of computational complexity for high-resolution space-velocity grid. Our approach assumes that \emph{(i)} the target signal is sparse in a discrete space-velocity domain, hence allowing for non-static target detection, and \emph{(ii)} the resulting multiple baseban…
Sparse recovery Space-time Adaptive Processing (STAP) can reduce the requirements of clutter samples, and suppress clutter effectively using limited training samples for airborne radar. The whole angle-Doppler plane is discretized into small grid points uniformly in presently available sparse recovery STAP methods, however, the clutter ridge is not located exactly on the pre-discretized grid points in non-sidelooking STAP radar. The off-grid effect degrades the performance of STAP significantly. In this paper, a gridless sparse recovery STAP method is proposed based on reweighted atomic norm m…
In radar accurate localization of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms, the high density, similar motion parameters, small radar cross-section (RCS), strong noise and far range put forward high requirements on radar resolution and transmitting power. In this paper, by using advantages of the long-time integration (LTI) technique and gridless sparse method, we construct a super-resolution framework for radar accurate localization of UAV swarms without changing radar hardware and system parameters. Thereafter, based on this framework, a range super-resolution method is proposed to realize the ra…
OG-PCL: Efficient Sparse Point Cloud Processing for Human Activity Recognition
Key Laboratory of Underwater Acoustic Signal Processing of Ministry of Education, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China（教育部水下声学信号处理重点实验室，东南大学，南京）
A novel dual-function radar communication (DFRC) system is proposed, that achieves high target resolution and high communication rate. It consists of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar, where only a small number of antennas are active in each channel use. The probing waveforms are orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) type. The OFDM carriers are divided into two groups, one that is used by the active antennas in a shared fashion, and another one, where each subcarrier is assigned to an active antenna in an exclusive fashion (private subcarriers). Target estimation is car…
We propose in this work a radar detection system for orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission. We assume that the transmitting antenna Tx is colocated with a monostatic radar. The latter knows the transmitted signal and listens to echoes coming from the reflection of fixed or moving targets. We estimate the targets parameters (range and velocity) using a 2D-Periodogram. Moreover, we improve the estimation performance in low signal to noise ratio (SNR) conditions using the discrete Fourier transform channel estimation (DFT-CE) and we show that Zadoff-Chu precoding (ZCP) ad…
In this paper, we address the problem of detecting multiple Noise-Like Jammers (NLJs) through a radar system equipped with an array of sensors. To this end, we develop an elegant and systematic framework wherein two architectures are devised to jointly detect an unknown number of NLJs and to estimate their respective angles of arrival. The followed approach relies on the likelihood ratio test in conjunction with a cyclic estimation procedure which incorporates at the design stage a sparsity promoting prior. As a matter of fact, the problem at hand owns an inherent sparse nature which is suitab…
Dual function radar communications (DFRC) systems are attractive technologies for autonomous vehicles, which utilize electromagnetic waves to constantly sense the environment while simultaneously communicating with neighbouring devices. An emerging approach to implement DFRC systems is to embed information in radar waveforms via index modulation (IM). Implementation of DFRC schemes in vehicular systems gives rise to strict constraints in terms of cost, power efficiency, and hardware complexity. In this paper, we extend IM-based DFRC systems to utilize sparse arrays and frequency modulated cont…
We consider the problem of range-Doppler imaging using one-bit automotive LFMCW1 or PMCW radar that utilizes one-bit ADC sampling with time-varying thresholds at the receiver. The one-bit sampling technique can significantly reduce the cost as well as the power consumption of automotive radar systems. We formulate the one-bit LFMCW/PMCW radar rangeDoppler imaging problem as one-bit sparse parameter estimation. The recently proposed hyperparameter-free (and hence user friendly) weighted SPICE algorithms, including SPICE, LIKES, SLIM and IAA, achieve excellent parameter estimation performance fo…
