Weak radar signal detection based on wavelet transform

Weak signal detection is a basic and important problem in radar systems. The detectable radar range is determined by the radar equation, and radar performance can be improved by increasing the receiver output signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR). The pulse integration method has been used to improve SNR. The new method proposed here, based on wavelet transform, has been used primarily for data compression in image processing. Since wavelet transform performs signal analysis using the wavelets that are localized in both time and frequency domains, better results are expected than would be expected if the conventional method of pulse integration in time domain is used. Using numerical simulations that assume white Gaussian noise is generated internally in the receiver, we show that an improvement of approximately 8 dB in SNR is obtained for only one pulse and high performance radar can be obtained using this method. This method can also be applied for signal detection in other digital communications.