Performance of phase Coded Radar for Detection of Stealth Targets

Abstract:
The stealth technology has been made to reduce the radar cross section (RCS) of the target to
a level where the echo reflected from it can not be detected by the radar receiver. There are
many techniques to reduce the RCS, the most useful ones are shaping of the taget and coating
it with absorbing materials. Coats of absorbing material over metallic surfaces, can
substantially reduce the energy of a returned signal. In this paper we evaluate the performance
of two classes of signals to deal with stealth point targets, namely the nonsinusoidal radar
signals and pulse compression signals. The target response depends on, time delay of
absorbing material, waveform of radar transmitted signal and coding pulses. Matched filter
are used for detection of various target responses. The autocorrelation function, represents a
delayed version of of the matched filter output, is determined analytically for various types of
the transmitted signals. It is shown that the proper choice of the transmitted signal duration
relative to the absorbing material time delay can improve the stealth target detection process.
In case of fast rate phase coded signals the autocorrelation functions for stealth targets are
similar to those of conventional point targets.