A radar power multiplier algorithm for acquisition of low observable ballistic missiles using an ESA radar

The problem of acquiring an incoming theater ballistic missile (TBM) presents many complex challenges. The missile should be detected and its state estimated within a short window of time because the flight time is short. In this paper the acquisition of an incoming missile using the measurements from a surface based electronically scanned array (ESA) radar is presented. We present a batch maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) to acquire the missile while it is exo-atmospheric. The estimator, which combines MLE with the probabilistic data association (PDA) algorithm to handle false alarms/clutter, also uses the amplitude information (signal strength). This facilitates target acquisition under low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions. The Cramer-Rao lower bound quantifying attainable estimate accuracies is also presented and shown to be achieved by the proposed estimator. It is also shown that the optimum detection threshold can be found by maximizing the information reduction factor that accounts for the loss of information.