Adaptive MCPC Radar Waveform Design with Improved Wideband Ambiguity Function

Multicarrier Phase-Coded (MCPC) signals have been recently introduced to radar systems as a kind of wideband signal. In this paper we study the wideband ambiguity function (WAF) of multicarrier phase-coded signals. Based on the fact that scattering characteristics of target varies with frequency, we propose an approach which adaptively changes the transmitted frequency weights to improve radar's WAF. The adaptive waveform also yields better auto-correlation function. Using optimization procedure, frequency weights are adaptively changed such that the volume of the corresponding WAF best approximates the volume of a desired ambiguity function. Simulation results show that proper selection of carrier number and symbol length can yield better properties of WAF.