Single-Pulse Simultaneous Target Detection and Angle Estimation in a Multichannel Phased Array Radar

This paper is focused on simultaneous target detection and angle estimation with a multichannel phased array radar. Resorting to a linearized expression for the array steering vector around the beam pointing direction, the problem is formulated as a composite binary hypothesis test where the unknowns, under the alternative hypothesis, include the target directional cosines displacements with respect to the array nominal coarse pointing direction. The problem is handled via the Generalized Likelihood Ratio (GLR) criterion (both one-step and two-step) where decision statistics leveraging the Maximum Likelihood Estimates (MLEs) of the parameters are compared with a detection threshold. If crossed, target presence is declared and the MLEs of the aforementioned displacements directly provide target angular position with respect to the pointing direction. From the analytic point of view, ML estimation involves a constrained fractional quadratic optimization problem whose optimal solution can be found via the Dinkelbach's algorithm or approximated through a fast-converging procedure based on a Coordinate Descent (CD) optimization. The performance analysis of the proposed architectures as well as the corresponding discussion is developed in terms of computational complexity, Constant False Alarm Rate (CFAR) behavior, detection performance, and angular estimation accuracy, also in comparison with some counterparts available in the open literature and theoretical benchmark limits.