Airborne Target Detection using Dual Matched Filter Discriminator with Matched Waveform Illumination for Coherent Jammer Suppression

In this paper, we introduce a technique that uses mutual information-based matched illumination transmission to mitigate the false targets produced by a coherent jammer (CJ). The dual-matched-filter discriminator (DMFD) is designed to distinguish true detections with the target return echo from false detections from the CJ interference. In contrast to the traditional single matched filter detector, the DMFD consists of two separate matched filters: one matched to the transmit waveform-target response echo and the other matched to CJ emission (i.e. copy of the transmit waveform) allowing the discriminator to suppress CJ interference and derive a jammer-suppressed received signal. The detection decision (for the true target present) is then derived using the jammer-suppressed signal. High-fidelity aircraft target radar cross section (RCS) responses generated using CAD models are utilized in our experiments. The results from simulations show that there is a significant reduction in false detection rate when the DMFD approach is applied.