Instantaneous altitude estimation of maneuvering target in over-the-horizon radar exploiting multipath Doppler signatures

Over-the-horizon radar systems are capable of localizing targets in range and azimuth but are unable to achieve reliable altitude estimation. Past work has shown that the time-varying Doppler signatures of micro-multipath signals provide rich information for reliable estimation of altitude changes. In this paper, we develop a new technique for the estimation of instantaneous altitude of maneuvering targets by exploiting the estimated multicomponent Doppler signatures. A key contribution of this paper is to apply effective non-stationary signal analysis techniques for estimating the time-varying Doppler signature of each individual multipath. This enables reliable target altitude estimation in an extended Kalman filter setup. The maximum a-posteriori criterion is used for the estimation of initial target states.