Effect of Time-Varying Plasma Sheath on Hypersonic Vehicle-Borne Radar Target Detection

Hypersonic vehicle-borne radar target detection will suffer from time-varying plasma sheath which is formed during hypersonic flight. In this study, effect of time-varying plasma sheath on hypersonic vehicle-borne radar target detection is investigated. First, the radar echo model coupling time-varying plasma sheath effect is proposed using an analytical computation method. The regulation of electron density variation is based on flow parameters. Coherent integration result with the present of time-varying plasma sheath effect is derived. The degradations of hypersonic vehicle-borne radar target detection under time-varying plasma sheath are studied through real hypersonic vehicle flight cases. Simulation results shows that high electron density of time-varying plasma sheath will cause significant attenuation, which will lead to decrease of detection probability. In some cases, the signal-noise ratio (SNR) threshold that target can be detected increases more than 40 dB compared with situation without time-varying plasma sheath. Moreover, time-varying plasma sheath will cause time-varying amplitude and phase in pulse and between different pulses, causing intra-pulse and inter-pulse modulation phenomena. These phenomena lead to the disappearance of peak value in range-Doppler plane which will degrade the coherent accumulation as well as target detection performance. By using plasma sheath electron density diagnosis method on vehicle, compensation factor according to the electron density can be established to compensate plasma sheath effect in radar echoes. Simulations results based on real hypersonic vehicle flight flow parameters confirm the conclusions above. The work in this paper will benefit the design and application of hypersonic vehicle-borne radar in the future.