Nullifying ACF grating lobes in stepped-frequency train of LFM pulses

Nadav Levanon*, Eli Mozeson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

An effective way to increase the bandwidth of a coherent pulse-train is to add a frequency step Δf between consecutive pulses. A large Δf implies a large total bandwidth, hence improved range resolution. However, when the product of the frequency step times the pulse-duration tp, is larger than one (tpΔf > 1), the autocorrelation function (ACF) of the stepped-frequency pulse-train suffers from ambiguous peaks, known as "grating lobes." It is well known that replacing the fixed-frequency pulses with linear FM (LFM) pulses of bandwidth B can reduce those grating lobes. We present a simple analytic expression for the ambiguity function (AF) and ACF of such a signal and derive from it very simple relationships between Δf, B, and tp that will place nulls exactly where the grating lobes are located, and thus remove them completely.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)694-703
Number of pages10
JournalIEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems
Volume39
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - Apr 2003

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