Dynamic Compressed HRRP Generation for Random Stepped-Frequency Radar Based on Complex-Valued Fast Sequential Homotopy

Compressed sensing has been applied to achieve high resolution range profiles (HRRPs) using a stepped-frequency radar. In this new scheme, much fewer pulses are required to recover the target's strong scattering centers, which can greatly reduce the coherent processing interval (CPI) and improve the anti-jamming capability. For practical applications, however, the required number of pulses is difficult to determine in advance and any reduction of the transmitted pulses is attractive. In this paper, a dynamic compressed sensing strategy for HRRP generation is proposed, in which the estimated HRRP is updated with sequentially transmitted and received pulses until the proper stopping rules are satisfied. To efficiently implement the sequential update, a complex-valued fast sequential homotopy (CV-FSH) algorithm is developed based on group sparse recovery. This algorithm performs as an efficient recursive procedure of sparse recovery, thus avoiding solving a new optimization problem from scratch. Furthermore, the proper stopping rules are presented according to the special characteristics of HRRP. Therefore, the optimal number of pulses required in each CPI can be sought adapting to the echo signal. The results using simulated and real data show the effectiveness of the proposed approach and demonstrate that the established dynamic strategy is more suitable for uncooperative targets.