Frequency Coding Waveform with Segment LFM

Caicai Gao, Kah Chan Teh, and Aifei Liu

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Nanyang Technological University
50 Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore
{GaoCC; EKCTeh; LiuAF}@ntu.edu.sg

AbstractIn this paper, we propose a frequency coding

waveform with segment linear frequency modulation (LFM)
signal for the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar.
This new waveform is modified from the discrete frequency
coding waveform with LFM (DFC-LFM) by changing the
subpulse from the LFM signal to segment LFM and extending
the contiguous waveform to a pulse train. Compared to the
existing frequency coding waveforms, the proposed waveform
has lower autocorrelation sidelobes and lower cross correlation.
Index TermsCross correlation, Doppler tolerance, frequency
coding waveform, MIMO radar, segment LFM.

I. INTRODUCTION
For the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar [1],
[2], in order to separate the received signals at the receiving
antennas, the cross correlation between signals transmitted by
different transmitting antennas should be as low as possible. In
addition, the designed waveforms should have low
autocorrelation sidelobes simultaneously.
Several frequency diversity waveforms [3]-[7] have been
designed to realize the above objectives, e.g., the discrete
frequency coding waveform (DFCW) [5], the discrete
frequency coding waveform with linear frequency modulation
signal (DFC-LFM) [6], and the modified DFC-LFM [7]. The
DFCW and DFC-LFM waveforms consist of contiguous
subpulses, however, the MDFC-LFM waveform is a pulse train
with discrete subpulses. The subpulses of the DFCW waveform
are constant frequency signals, whereas, the subpulses of the
DFC-LFM and MDFC-LFM waveforms are LFM signals.
Those waveforms share the same frame, i.e, the carrier
frequencies of different subpulses are different and different
transmitted signals have different frequency sequences.
A code set based on a piecewise LFM has been proposed in
[8]. For each transmitted signal, the LFM pulse was divided
into two segments with different frequency slope polarities and
same duration. The first segment is up-chirp and the second
segment is down-chirp. The bandwidth of each pulse is fixed,
however, the bandwidths of up-chirps of different signals are
different. It was reported that this waveform has good Doppler
tolerance, however, the autocorrelation sidelobes and cross
correlation are not low enough. This contiguous piecewise
LFM signal was digitized to subpulses with constant
frequencies [9], which leads to high autocorrelation sidelobes.
In this work, a frequency coding waveform with segment
LFM (FC-SLFM) is proposed. The subpulses in the DFC-LFM

c
978-1-4673-7297-8/15/$31.00 2015
IEEE

Fig. 1. Time-frequency schematic diagram of the DFC-LFM waveform for

one transmitting antenna.

waveform are changed from the LFM signals to segment LFM.

Each subpulse is divided into two segments with different
bandwidths and opposite frequency slope polarities. The carrier
frequency sequences and the bandwidth sequences are
optimized by the genetic algorithm. Then, we extend the
contiguous waveform to a pulse train. The autocorrelation,
cross correlation and Doppler tolerance properties of the
proposed waveform are presented and compared to the existing
frequency coding waveforms.
II. FREQUENCY CODING WAVEFORM WITH SEGMENT LFM
The time-frequency schematic diagram of the DFC-LFM
waveform for one transmitting antenna is shown in Fig. 1.
Noted that and B are the duration and bandwidth of the
subpulse, respectively. is the carrier frequency offset,
is the total bandwidth. Assuming that the MIMO radar
consists of M transmitting antennas and each transmitted
signal includes N contiguous subpulses. The subpulses of the
DFC-LFM waveform are LFM signals, and the nth subpulse
transmitted by the mth antenna is defined by
1 j 2 f mn t ( n 1)t p j t 2 B / t p
, ( n 1) t p t < nt p (1)
Smn (t ) =
e
e
tp

where m and n are the indexes of antenna and subpulse,

respectively. is the carrier frequency of the subpulse

and is defined by
f mn = f 0 + Cmn f
(2)

where is the base frequency and is

the parameter controlling the carrier frequency.

507

(a)

(b)

Fig. 2. (a) Time-frequency schematic diagram of the FC-SLFM contiguous

waveform. (b) Instantaneous frequency of one subpluse.

A. Proposed FC-SLFM Contiguous Waveform

The frequency coding contiguous waveform with segment
LFM is proposed based on the DFC-LFM waveform by
changing the subpulses from the LFM signals to segment
LFM. The time-frequency schematic diagram of the FCSLFM contiguous waveform and the instantaneous frequency
of one subpulse are shown in Fig. 2(a) and (b), respectively.
The subpulses are divided into two segments with the same
duration. However, the bandwidths and frequency slope
polarities of these two segments are different. The bandwidth

, which is chosen from

of the first segment is denoted by
the following bandwidth set

n(1 2k )
Bm = k +
B, n = 1, 2,", N
(3)

where the parameter k, , is used to control the

bandwidths in the above set. Hence, the bandwidth of the

. The subpulse
is
second segment is given by
defined by
Bmn 2

j
t
2 e j 2 f mn t ( n 1)t p e (t p 2 ) , ( n 1) t t < nt 2
p
p
t
p
n
S m (t ) =
B Bn
2 j 2 f n + 2 B B n t n 1 t j t 2m t 2
( ) p
(m
( p ) , nt 2 t < nt
m )

e
e
p
p
tp

(4)

B. Autocorrelation and Cross Correlation Optimization

In order to obtain lower autocorrelation sidelobes and
lower cross correlation, we use the genetic algorithm to
optimize the carrier frequency sequence, the bandwidth
sequence, and the bandwidth of the subpulse. The individuals
in the population are defined by
Indi = {C1 , ", Cm ,", CM ; B1 , ", Bm , ", BM ; }
(5)
where
i
is
the
index
of
each
individual,

and


are
the frequency sequence and bandwidth sequence of the signal
transmitted by the mth transmitting antenna, respectively. is
the parameter to control the bandwidth of the subpulse, i.e.,
. The cost function is given by
E=

m =1, 0

max Rm ( ) +

M 1

max R pq ( ) ,

| | Nt p .

p =1 q = p +1

(6)

508

Fig. 3. Autocorrelation functions and cross-correlation functions of the

proposed FC-SLFM contiguous waveform.
TABLE I. ASPS AND CPS OF THE FC-SLFM CONTIGUOUS WAVEFORM
dB
Signal 1
Signal 2
Signal 3

Signal 1
-28.6
-27.8
-28.2

Signal 2
-27.8
-29.3
-29.4

Signal 3
-28.2
-29.4
-27.7

The first summation term is the sum of autocorrelation

sidelobe peaks, the second summation term is the sum of
cross-correlation peaks, and is a coefficient to control the
weights of two summations. Here, is set to 1.
C. Numerical Results and Discussion
We use the numerical results to show the performance of
the proposed waveform and compare to the existing frequency
coding waveforms. The parameters are set as follows:

Total bandwidth: Ball = 50 MHz,

Subpulse duration: tp = 5 s,

Number of transmitting antennas: M = 3,

Number of subpulses: N = 32.

Wavelength: = 0.1 m.
The parameter k in (3) is set to 0.2. With the optimized
sequences, the autocorrelation functions (ACF) and crosscorrelation functions (CCF) of the FC-SLFM contiguous
waveform are shown in Fig. 3. The corresponding
autocorrelation sidelobe peaks (ASP) and cross-correlation
peaks (CP) are listed in Table I. ASP and CP depend on the
frequency and bandwidth sequences. Different signals with
different and have different ASPs and CPs.
The performance comparisons among the proposed
waveform, the DFCW and DFC-LFM waveforms are listed in
Table II. We observe that the proposed FC-SLFM contiguous
waveform has lower autocorrelation sidelobes and lower cross
correlation comparing to the other two existing frequency
coding waveforms. Especially, the average ASP and CP are
about 5 dB lower than those of the DFC-LFM waveform.

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)

TABLE II. PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS FOR VARIOUS WAVEFORMS

Waveforms
Average ASP (dB)
Average CP (dB)

FC-SLFM
-28.5
-28.4

DFC-LFM
-23.9
-23.6

DFCW
-13.4
-29.5

Fig. 5. Autocorrelation functions and cross-correlation functions of the FCSLFM pulse train for .
(a)

which, the range-Doppler map can be obtained to indicate the

moving target. The subpulse

of the frequency coding
pulse train with segment LFM is defined by
Bmn 2

j
t
n
2
t
j 2 f m t ( n 1)Tr
( 2 ) , n 1 t t < nt 2

e
e p
( )p
p
t
p
n
S m (t ) =
B Bn
2 j 2 f n + 2 B B n t n 1 T j t 2m t 2
(
)
(m
( p ) , nt 2 t < nt
m )
r

e
e
p
p
tp

(7)
where is the pulse repetition interval. In addition, in the
genetic algorithm, different to (6), just the ASPs and CPs with
the delay short than Tr are calculated. The cost function is
modified to
E=

m =1, 0

(b)
Fig. 4. Ambiguity functions. (a) FC-SLFM contiguous waveform, (b) DFCLFM waveform.

For one transmitted signal, the ambiguity functions of the

FC-SLSM and DFC-LFM waveforms are shown in Fig. 4(a)
and (b), respectively. The range sidelobes of the proposed
waveform are lower than those of the DFC-LFM waveform.
As the amplitude reduces quickly with the Doppler shift, the
Doppler tolerance of the FC-SLFM contiguous waveform is
not good. The Doppler processing with a group of match
filters should be implemented to detect the moving target.
III. FREQUENCY CODING PULSE TRAIN WITH SLFM
As the Doppler tolerance of the proposed frequency coding
contiguous waveform with segment LFM is not good, we
extend the contiguous waveform to a pulse train, based on

max Rm ( ) +

M 1

max R pq ( ) ,

| | Tr

p =1 q = p +1

(8)
We use some numerical results to show the performance of
various waveforms. The parameters are set as follows:

Total bandwidth: Ball = 5 MHz,

Subpulse duration: tp = 50 s,

Pulse repetition interval: Tr = 500 s,

Number of transmitting antennas: M = 3,

Number of subpulses: N = 32.

Wavelength: = 0.1 m.
The waveforms in this Section and Section II have the
same time-bandwidth product. The autocorrelation and crosscorrelation functions of the FC-SLFM pulse train for
are shown in Fig. 5. The corresponding ASPs and CPs are
listed in Table III. The ambiguity functions of the proposed
pulse train and the MDFC-LFM waveform are shown in Fig.
6(a) and (b), respectively. The performance comparisons are
listed in Table IV.

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)

509

TABLE III. ASPS AND CPS OF THE FC-SLFM PULSE TRAIN FOR
dB
Signal 1
Signal 2
Signal 3

Signal 1
-29.3
-34.1
-34.1

Signal 2
-34.1
-29.3
-34.5

Signal 3
-34.1
-34.5
-29.3

TABLE IV. PERFORMANCE COMPARISONS FOR VARIOUS WAVEFORMS

Average ASP
(dB)
Average CP
(dB)

Bandwidth (MHz)
5
50
5
50

FC-SLFM
-29.3
-33.5
-34.2
-39.8

MDFC-LFM
-31.7
-31.3
-31.0
-31.5

Table IV that, while the bandwidth varies from 5 MHz to 50

MHz, the average ASP and average CP of the MDFC-LFM
waveform almost remain the same, however, the average CP
of the FC-SLFM pulse train reduces from -33.5 dB to -39.8 dB
and the average ASP reduces from -29.3 dB to -34.2 dB. This
means that unlike the MDFC-LFM waveform, the
autocorrelation sidelobes and cross correlation of the proposed
waveform become lower with the increase of the bandwidth.
This is useful for some applications with wide bandwidth.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a new frequency coding waveform with
segment LFM signals has been proposed. The numerical
results have shown that the autocorrelation sidelobes and cross
correlation of both the contiguous waveform and the pulse
train are lower than the existing frequency coding waveforms.
The cross-correlation peaks are improved significantly and are
reduced with the increase of the bandwidth. By extending the
contiguous waveform to a pulse train, the autocorrelation
sidelobes and cross correlation nearby the mainlobe area of the
autocorrelation function are reduced. Besides, some grating
lobes with low amplitude which are required to be further
nullified appear in the autocorrelation function.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Temasek Laboratories at
Nanyang Technological University (TL@NTU) for providing
the funding to carry out this research.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 6. Ambiguity functions. (a) FC-SLFM pulse train, (b) MDFC-LFM
waveform.

When the total bandwidth is equal to 5 MHz, with the

delay shorter than the subpulse duration, the FC-SLFM pulse
train and the MDFC-LFM waveform have the similar
ambiguity function, the range sidelobes are very low and the
Doppler sidelobe peaks are about -13.2 dB. It is shown in

510

REFERENCES
[1] E. Brookner, MIMO radar: Demystified, Microw. J., vol. 56,
no. 1, pp. 22-44, Jan. 2013.
[2] H. B. Sun, F. Brigui, and M. Lesturgie, Analysis and
comparison of MIMO radar waveforms, in Proc. Int. Radar
Conf., Lille, France, Oct. 2014, pp. 1-6.
[3] P. F. Sammartino, C. J. Baker, and H. D. Griffiths, Frequency
diverse MIMO techniques for radar, IEEE Trans. Aerosp.
Electron. Syst., vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 201-222, Jan. 2013.
[4] W. Q. Wang, MIMO SAR OFDM chirp waveform diversity
design with random matrix modulation, IEEE Trans. Geosci.
Remote Sens., vol.53, no.3, pp. 1616-1625, Mar. 2015.
[5] H. Deng, Discrete frequency-coding waveform design for
netted radar systems, IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 11, no. 2,
pp. 179-182, Feb. 2004.
[6] B. Liu, Orthogonal discrete frequency-coding waveform set
design with minimized autocorrelation sidelobes, IEEE Trans.
Aerosp. Electron. Syst., vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 1650-1657, Oct. 2009.
[7] C. C. Gao, K. C. Teh, and A. F. Liu, Orthogonal frequency
diversity waveform with range-Doppler optimization for MIMO
radar, IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 21, no. 10, pp. 12011205, Oct. 2014.
[8] F. A. Qazi and A. T. Fam, Good code sets based on piecewise
linear FM, in Proc. IEEE Radar Conf., Atlanta, GA, May.
2012, pp. 522-527.
[9] F. A. Qazi and A. T. Fam, Discrete frequency-coding
waveform sets based on piecewise linear FM, in Proc. IEEE
Radar Conf., Cincinnati, OH, May. 2014, pp. 469-473.

2015 IEEE 5th Asia-Pacific Conference on Synthetic Aperture Radar(APSAR)