A Computationally Efficient Approach for Velocity Estimation of Ground Moving Targets

In this paper, a novel algorithm for the parameters estimation of chirp signals is proposed. Chirp rate and centroid frequency of chirp signals are estimated based on a one-dimensional dechirp optimization problem (DOP). The proposed DOP algorithm is useful for synthetic aperture radar (SAR) systems since the azimuth signal of a moving target represents chirp properties, so the along-track and across-track velocities of moving targets can be efficiently estimated. The distinctive feature of the proposed DOP algorithm, as compared with other motion parameters estimators, is its efficiency from the computational point of view. This is obtained by converting the traditional two-dimensional search to an efficient and simple one-dimensional optimization problem. Finally, simulations are presented to validate the theoretical investigations.