Time and phase synchronization using clutter observations in airborne distributed coherent aperture radars

Airborne Distributed Coherent Aperture Radar (ADCAR) is one of the most promising next-generation radars to significantly improve target detection and discrimination abilities. However, time and phase synchronization among unit radars should be done before an ADCAR is intended to cohere on a potential target. To address this problem, a time and phase synchronization technique using clutter observations is proposed in this paper. Clutter returns from different azimuths and elevations on the surface of the earth are employed to calibrate system uncertainties. Two stages are mainly considered: a scene registration among range-Doppler units from different transmit/receive pairs is performed to enhance the clutter coherence in the first stage, followed by a joint estimation of those synchronization errors in the second stage. To relieve the computational burden, a novel Separable and Sequential Estimation (SSE) method is provided to separate the unknowns at the sacrifice of a range-Doppler unit. Moreover, performance analyses including the clutter coherence ability, estimation lower bound, and signal coherence loss are also performed. Finally, simulation results indicate that ADCAR time and phase synchronization is realized by using our methods.