Single-Pulse Estimation of Target Velocity on Planar Arrays

Doppler velocity estimation in pulse-Doppler radar is done by evaluating the target returns of bursts of pulses. While this provides convenience and accuracy, it requires multiple pulses. In adaptive and cognitive radar systems, the ability to adapt on consecutive pulses, instead of bursts, brings potential performance benefits. Hence, with radar transceiver arrays growing increasingly larger in their number of elements over the years, it may be time to re-evaluate how Doppler velocity can be estimated when using large planar arrays. In this work, we present variance bounds on the estimation of velocity using the Doppler shift as it appears in the array model. We also propose an efficient method of performing the velocity estimation and we verify its performance using Monte Carlo simulations.