A Road Map for Optimizing Smeared-Spectrum Jamming Against Pulse Compression Radars

Jamming search radar has been conventionally addressed using the so-called brute force jamming, in which the jamming power is increased to be higher than that of the signal at the detector input. However, modern radars such as compression linear frequency modulation radars introduce a significant processing gain using matched filtering and wideband signals. This additional processing gain hinders the ability of jamming systems to deny the detection of these modern radars as the required power level using the conventional brute force techniques may be infeasible. In this paper, the smeared jamming is considered as a smart noise-free jamming technique. It can deprive modern radar detection at reasonable jamming power levels. In this regard, we optimize the parameters of the smeared jamming to maximize its effectiveness against high processing-gain radars, which has not been considered heretofore. To evaluate the efficacy of the proposed parameters optimization, a challenging radar model is employed, and the detection performance is investigated under two constant false alarm rate detectors. Monte Carlo simulations show that the proposed optimized jamming technique has a substantial effect on the radar detection with a relatively low jamming power.