High-resolution time-frequency distributions for manoeuvring target detection in over-the-horizon radars

A novel high-resolution time-frequency representation method is proposed for source detection and classification in over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) systems. A data-dependent kernel is applied in the ambiguity domain to capture the target signal components, which are then resolved using root-MUSIC based coherent spectrum estimation. This two-step procedure is particularly effective for analysing a multicomponent signal with time-varying complex time-Doppler signatures. By using the different time-Doppler signatures, important target manoeuvring information, which is difficult to extract using other linear and bilinear time-frequency representation methods, can be easily revealed using the proposed method.