Angle-Independent Doppler Velocity Measurement

When the angle between the target heading and the range vector is not known a priori, a Doppler velocity radar must estimate them simultaneously by utilizing a longer section of the track. The conventional least squares iterative solution is compared with a new explicit alogorithm which utilizes range-rate derivatives. It is shown that the explicit algorithm is biased but is less sensitive to noise. The bias, however, can be estimated and removed. Hence, the computationally simpler explicit velocity estimation method yields better performance. An analytical closed form expression for the resulting mean square estimation error and simulation results are given.