Abstract:
The performance of distributed radar system is affected by synchronization errors, beam pointing errors, and amplitude-phase errors. Conventional performance correction methods are all carried out before radar systems operating, but non-ideal factors such as temperature changes and frequency drifts can cause real-time amplitude-phase errors, reducing the detection performances and interference suppression capabilities of radars. In this paper a real-time compensation method is proposed for amplitude-phase errors in dual-node distributed radar system by utilizing the independence between the signal-plus-interference space and the noise space. The proposed method not only compensates for amplitude-phase errors in real time but also enhances the mainlobe interference suppression performance. Real-time signal models are established for synchronization errors, beam pointing errors, and amplitude-phase errors. Then the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified through Monte Carlo simulation, which evaluates the changes in the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio after beamforming as the evaluation criterion. Additionally, the proposed model achieves microsecond-level time synchronization and low-latency data processing through the synchronization pulses of global positioning system and field-programmable gate array preprocessors, which ensures the real-time performance of error compensation. The research results provide theoretical support and practical reference for the application of distributed radar system in complex dynamic environments. In the future, the research can be further extended to the dynamic compensation of synchronization errors and beam pointing errors.