Exploiting Agile Waveforms and Sampling for Compressive Sensing Radar

Over the past decade, enormous advancements in the field of compressive sensing have provided a new framework for reconstructing signals from incomplete measurements, thus offering feasible mathematical tools for efficient data collection. Applying compressive sensing to sea-based radar could result in a number of distinct advantages, including power conservation, larger search area, and clutter suppression. Arete proposes to assess the feasibility of applying compressive sensing to modern radar systems with the goal of enabling low-power or high-search area detection, tracking and imaging of small maritime targets. In Phase I, we intend to do this in a proof-of-concept by approximating the waveform as a series of delta function frequencies and applying a quadratic residue mask to them. Returns using the masked waveform will then be reconstructed using Arete"s Waveform Correction algorithm (analogous to Orthogonal Matching Pursuit). Arete also has a vetted Radar Simulation Code capable of providing extremely realistic SAR or RAR images from ocean or littoral scenes. This code will be used along with a small craft injector to test our compressive sensing algorithm on realistic scenarios.