2013 IEEE International Conference on Green Computing and Communications and IEEE Internet of Things and IEEE Cyber,

Physical and Social Computing

The radar echo simulation of moving targets

based on HRRP
Tao Zhao, Chun-Zhu Dong, Hong-Mei Ren and Hong-Cheng Yin
Science and Technology on Electromagnetic Scattering Laboratory
Beijing, 100854, P. R. China
zhaot717@163.com
AbstractTo solve the radar echo simulation of moving targets,
a new method is put forward based on the high resolution range
profile (HRRP) of the target in this paper. Although this method
demands much storage, it avoids the complicated parameter
estimation, and is more close to the scattering features of target.
The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method is verified
compared with ESPRIT method.

II.

A. the echo signal of moving target consisting of multiple

scattering points
Supposing the transmitted Linear Frequency Modulation
(LFM) signal is
1
t j 2 Q( fct  2 kt2 )
sT (t, t)  Arect( )e
Tp

Keywordsmoving target; radar echo; high resolution range

profile; electromagnetic scattering.

I.

(1)

where, A is the transmitted signal amplitude; Tp is pulse width,

and k is the frequency modulation rate.

INTRODUCTION

Simulation of complex radar dynamic scenes demands high

fidelity and complexity of radar echo signal, which can provide
accurate data for imaging and recognition of moving complex
target.

Supposing the target has P scattering points, the received

radar echo is

At present, some researchers mainly apply point scattering

model to describe the scattering characteristic of target. The echo
signal was created in [1][2] by supposing the position, amplitude
and phase of the scattering points and movement track of target,
where the used model is too simple to accurately describe the real
target. For the complex targets, when the swept data is gained,
parameter estimation method is used to estimate the position,
amplitude, phase, and type of the scattering points accurately.
Reference [3] adopted the Prony model to estimate the
parameters based on polarization features, but it isnt stable.
References [4][5] used MUSIC method or CLEAN method to
estimate scattering parameters, and got rough results of the
parameters, and the climax search in this method demands too
much time. References [6][7] utilized ESPRIT method to get
scattering parameters well, but it is very sensitive to the order of
model and signal-to-noise ratio.

sr (t, t)  Aa H i rect(

t 

i 1

2Ri

TP

c )e j 2 Q{ fc (t 

2Ri
c

2R
1
) k (t i )2 }
2
c

 N (t )
(2)

where

Ac is the received signal amplitude, and determined by the

radar echo power via the radar equation; H i is a complex

number to describe the amplitude and phase of scattering points,
which depends on carrier frequency, polarization and direction of
incidence wave. Here N (t ) mainly denotes the receiver noise,
expressed by Gaussian random signal [8],

n(t )  Re{ n[ 1 (t )  jn2 (t )]e

jwc t

(3)

where, both n1 (t ) and n2 (t ) is the Gaussian signals with zero

average and N 0 variance. N 0 is determined by the formula

The parameter estimate methods can save storage and achieve

easy hardwired simulation. However, they are usually timeconsuming and instable. Therefore, a new method without the
parameter estimation is put forward based on the high resolution
range profile (HRRP) of moving target in this paper. Although
the proposed method needs more storage, it avoids the
complicated parameter estimation, and is more close to the
scattering features of target. Finally, the method is verified by
numeric results. It gives better results under the same and low
S/N ratio compared with the extensively used ESPRIT method.
978-0-7695-5046-6/13 $26.00 2013 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/GreenCom-iThings-CPSCom.2013.283

THE RADAR ECHO SIMULATION METHOD

N o  kTo N F BF

where,

is

Boltzmann

constant,

k  1.38 q 1023 J

; T is the temperature of receiver, N F is the

K o
receiver noise coefficient; BF is the bandwidth of noise signal.
Supposing range measured is
is
1580

Rref

, then the reference signal

sref (t, t)  e

j 2 Q { fc (t 

2Rref
c

2Rref 2
1
) k (t
) }
c
2

When the form of target movement with the high speed and
acceleration is relatively complex, the received radar echo is

P
t  2Ri (t, tm )
siR (t, tm )  Aa H i rect

Tp
i

2
2R (t ,tm ) 1 2Ri (t,tm )
 k t 
}
j {2 Q fc t  i
2
c
c

where, Ri (t, tm )  Ri (tm ) VT (tm )t 

(5)

 N (t )

1
a (t )t2
2 T m

j ('1i '2 i '3 i O (t3 ))

 N (t )

2 Rref (tm )  2 R'i 2

VT (tm ) VT (tm ) 2
f
)]t
 1)
t  2S a[ c  k
c
c
c
c2

may result in the widened range profile.

B. the echo simulation of moving target

After de-chirping,

si (t )  Aa H i rect
e

4S k (

(4)

H
By the (2), i reflects the scattering feature of target. The
simulation method based on multiple scattering point model,
where each point is assumed to be isotropic and independent, is
difficult to accurately approach the real target. For the complex
H
targets, a few samples of i cant reflect the real scattering
feature, but HRRP contains the complex and full scattering
information. So, when the HRRP of target is gained, the echo can
be got by (6), where N shows the profile cell total. The received
echo is

(6)

si (t, tm )  Aa

i=1

where,

'1i (t, tm )  4Q fc

'2i (t, tm )  2Q

R%i

2R%i

4Q{

 4Qc k

c
fc
k

R%i (2Rref (tm )  R%i )

c2

III.

2Rref (tm )  2R%i VT (tm )

}
kt
c
c

R%i 2

V (t )
V (t )
 4Qk ( T m  1) T m t2
c
c
2Rref (tm )  2R%i 2
fc
 2Qa[  k
)]t
c
c2

'3i (t, tm )  4Qk

c2

R%i  Ri (tm )  Rref (tm )

t  2Ri (t, tm )
rect
 rect

Tp

O (t )

is the order terms of rapid time exceeding quadric phase

item, and is neglected.

'1i (t, tm )

i=-N/2

j ('1i '2 i '3 i O (t3 ))

 N (t )

(7)

Usually, the accurate swept data can be obtained by

measurement of echo in microwave anechonic chamber or
electromagnetic calculation based on the solution of Maxwells
equations.

kt 

N/2

H rect
e

THE ECHO SIMULATION PROCESS

HRRP gained by IFT from the swept measured data is

incorporated into (7) to form the echo signal where the noise and
phase item resulting from speed and acceleration are added. Fig.1.
shows the simulation process of radar echo:
Step(1): Setting the model, aspect, pitch, polarization, swept
data;
Step(2): Estimate the radial speed and acceleration by the
movement track, and calculate the radar line-of-sight (LOS)
angle, and extract the corresponding swept data.
Step(3): Use IFT to gain HRRP, and get
caused by speed and acceleration in (7).

Hi

, add phase item

N
Step(4): Calculate the echo amplitude Aa and 0 by radar
equation. And add radar noise by (3) into (7).

The swept
data

is the constant phase.

IFT

HRRP

'2i (t, tm )

is the phase term containing the position

information, and can make the range profile translate;

Add radar
noise

'3i (t, tm )

is the quadratic phase item, containing the residual

video phase (RVP), which can be compensated and doesnt affect
the range profile, but the phase item,

Add phase item

caused by
velocity and
accerlation

Calculate echo amplitude

and noise power

Fig.1. Radar echo simulation process of moving targets

1581

IV.

and relativity are adopted, and defined as follow:

SIMULATION EXAMPLES

Model: multiple scattering point model, and the parameters

defined in TABEL 1.
TABEL 1 target parameters
Scattering point
1
2
3
4
5

range
3
1
-0.5
-2
-4

Amplitude and phase

6e
4e

2.5e
4e
4e

Relativity: U 

target type
1
0
0.5
-1
-2

Method
this method
ESPRIT
this method
ESPRIT
this method
ESPRIT
this method
ESPRIT
this method
ESPRIT

the amplitude

-2

-1

range(m)
Fig.2. HRRP

theoretic value





the amplitude

0
-4

-3

-2

-1



T
T

measure
i

measure 2
i

Tisimulation

simulation 2
i

SNR (dB)
No noise
20
15
10
5

Standard error
0.08
0.25
0.18
0.42
0.27
0.65
0.40
0.85
0.51
1.12

Relativity
0.95
0.83
0.91
0.80
0.87
0.75
0.85
0.69
0.83
0.65

Fig.4 and Fig.5 are the radar echo and HRRP at different
velocity and same acceleration, respectively. The results show
that with the accretion of radial speed, the excursion and
aberration of HRRP shifts severely, which is coincided with the
theoretical expectancy.

Fig.3. gives comparison between this method and the ESPRIT

method, and indicates that this method obtains more accurate
results than the ESPRIT method.
5

i 1

 Tisimulation

Finally, this method is utilized to simulate the radar echo of a

moving missile target. The swept data of the target is obtained
from anechonic chamber measurement. The transmitted signal is
at C band, with 600 MHz bandwidth and 75us pulse width. The
radar transmitted power is 1GW, antenna gain is 50dB, system
loss is 6dB, noise coefficient is 3dB, and noise temperature is
260K.

-3

measure
i

TABEL 2 the evaluation results between this method and ESPRIT method under
different SNR

The simulated HRRP is given in Fig. 2.

-4

TABEL 2 is the standard error and relativity results of above

two methods. It shows that this method is more excellent than
ESPRIT when the SNR is as low as 10 dB.

Radar parameters: C band, bandwidth is 500 MHz, pulse

width is 75us.

0
-5

1
M

Standard error: F 

4
-5

x 10

Fig .3.comparison between this method and the ESPRIT method

In order to evaluate the simulation results, the standard error

1582

-9

amplitude

1.5

V.

x 10

In this paper, a new accurate radar echo simulation method

based on HRRP is brought out. Compared with the extensively
used ESPRIT algorithm, it doesnt need the complex parameter
estimation, and reflects more scattering features of target.
Although this method has the shortcoming of taking up more
storages, with the rapid development of hardware technique, it is
promising in solving the accurate echo simulation problem of
complex dynamic scene in the foreseeable future.

0.5

0
-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0


5
-5

x 10

a) velocity = 0m/s, acceleration = 100m/s2

REFERENCES

-9

amplitude

1.5

x 10

[1]

[2]
0.5

[3]

0
-5

-4

-3

-2

-1

0


5
-5

x 10

b) velocity = 2km/s, acceleration = 100m/s2

[4]

-9

amplitude

1.5

x 10

[5]

0.5

0
-5

[6]
-4

-3

-2

-1

0


[7]

-5

x 10

c) velocity = 6km/s, acceleration = 100m/s2

[8]

Fig.4. the radar echo with different velocity

0.9




0.8
0.7

amplitude

0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
-5

-4

CONCLUSION

-3

-2

-1

range(m)

Fig.5. HRRP with different velocity

1583

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