A new fractional Fourier transform based monopulse tracking radar processor

Conventional monopulse radar processors are used to track a target that appears in the look direction beam width. The distortion produced when additional targets appear in the look direction beam width can cause severe erroneous outcomes from the monopulse processor. This leads to errors in the target tracking angles that may cause the target tracker to fail. A new signal processing algorithm is presented in this paper that is based on the use of optimal Fractional Fourier Transform (FrFT) filtering to solve this problem. The relative performance of the new filtering method over traditional based methods is assessed using standard deviation angle estimation error (STDAE) for a range of simulated environments. The proposed system configurations with the optimum FrFT filters succeeds in effectively cancelling additional target signals appearing in the look direction beam width.