SUPERRESOLUTION PROCESSING FOR HF SURFACE-WAVE RADAR BASED ON PRE-WHITENED MUSIC

Owing to the decametric wavelength, the angular resolution of high-fre quency surface wave radar (HFSWR) is usually coarse, especially when d imensions of antenna array are restricted such as in shipborne HFSWR a pplications, In this paper, the relative strength of atmospheric noise and sea clutter that will heavily degrade the capabilities of HFSWR i n target detection and resolution are calculated, then a method for es timating the spatial covariance matrix of background noise is presente d. By introducing a pre-whitening procedure in multiple signal classif ication (MUSIC), the resolution performance of MUSIC is enhanced in sp atially colored noise environment. Results with data from the aircraft detecting experiment conducted by the Research Institute of Electroni c Engineering of Harbin Institute of Technology in 1994 and simulated data of two targets show that pre-whiten MUSIC can provide a better re solution and accurate determination of target number. Furthermore, a p ost-processing method is proposed to eliminate the sidelobe of spatial spectrum arising from the estimation errors of a noise covariance mat rix.