Detection of low probability

of intercept radar signals

K.M. Wong, T. Davidson and S. Abelkader

The scientific or technical validity of this Contract Report is entirely the responsibility of the Contractor
and the contents do not necessarily have the approval or endorsement of Defence R&D Canada.

Defence R&D Canada – Ottawa

Contract Report
DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142
September 2009
Detection of low probability of intercept
radar signals

K.M. Wong
T. Davidson
S. Abelkader
McMaster University

Prepared By:
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton ON
L9T 2Y1

Contractor Number: W7714-061022/001SV

CSA: Jim Lee, 613-998-2112

The scientific or technical validity of this Contract Report is entirely the responsibility of the Contractor and the
contents do not necessarily have the approval or endorsement of Defence R&D Canada.

Defence R&D Canada – Ottawa

Contract Report
DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142
September 2009
 Scientific Authority

Original signed by Jim Lee

Jim Lee
Defence Scientist

Approved by

Original signed by J.F. Rivest

J.F. Rivest
SH/REW

Approved for release by

Original signed by Brian Eatock

Brian Eatock
Chairman/ DRP

© Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, as represented by the Minister of National Defence, 2009
© Sa Majesté la Reine (en droit du Canada), telle que représentée par le ministre de la Défense nationale,
2009
Abstract ……..

Modern radar systems employ new type of signals, which are more difficult to detect and
exploit. These signals are known as Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) signals. In this
project, we study the performance of the intercept receiver in the scenario of LPI signals.
We propose different techniques to detect and characterize the intercepted signals. We
study the application of time-frequency techniques to this problem. Namely, we apply the
Wigner-Ville distribution method to construct the time-frequency spectrum of the received
signal and detect the presence of a radar signal. We apply the Hough transform, as a line
detector, to the Wigner-Ville spectrum to enhance the performance of signal detection and
estimation. We also propose the use of a novel technique for the detection/estimation of
the intercepted radar signals. This technique is based on cross-correlation properties, and
is shown to enjoy very fast processing time together with very accurate
detection/estimation performance.

Various numerical examples are included to evaluate the performance of these proposed
methods under different scenarios.

Résumé ….....

Les systèmes radar modernes utilisent un nouveau type de signaux qui est plus difficile à
détecter et à exploiter. Ces signaux sont connus sous le nom de signaux à faible
probabilité d’interception (LPI). Dans le présent projet, nous étudions les performances
du récepteur d’interception dans le scénario des signaux LPI. Nous proposons différentes
techniques pour détecter et caractériser les signaux interceptés. Nous étudions
l’application de techniques temps-fréquence à ce problème. Notamment, nous appliquons
la méthode de distribution de Wigner-Ville pour construire le spectre temps-fréquence du
signal reçu et détecter la présence d’un signal radar. Nous appliquons la transformée de
Hough, en tant que détecteur linéaire, au spectre de Wigner-Ville pour améliorer les
performances de détection et d’estimation du signal. De plus, nous proposons l’utilisation
d’une nouvelle technique pour la détection/estimation des signaux radar interceptés. Cette
technique est basée sur les propriétés de corrélation croisée, et il est démontré qu’elle
jouit d’un temps de traitement très rapide de même que de performances de
détection/d’estimation de très grande précision.

Divers exemples numériques sont inclus pour évaluer les performances de ces méthodes
proposées dans différents scénarios.

DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142 i

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ii DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142

Executive summary

Detection of low probability of intercept radar signals

K.M. Wong; T. Davidson; S. Abdelkader; DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142; Defence
R&D Canada – Ottawa; September 2009.

Principal results: In this project, we address the problem of detection/estimation of LPI

radar signals. The main points of the project are listed in the following

• Two types of LPI signals are studied; the Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave
(FMCW) signals and the bi-phase Barker codes signals.

• Time-frequency tools are introduced to characterize the intercepted signals. Two

methods are described in details
1. The cross Wigner-Ville distribution method, which is a modification of the
well-known Wigner-Ville technique by using a generated reference signal
together with the received signal to generate the time-frequency spectrum.
2. The Wigner-Hough method, which applies the Hough transform to the Wigner-
Ville spectrum to detect the presence of LPI signals.

• Cross-correlation techniques are proposed as a fast and very accurate way of

detecting and characterizing the intercepted radar signal. Different methods are
discussed
1. Spatially separated receivers: Here, the cross-correlation value is computed
between the received signals of two (or more) spatially separated receivers.
2. Delayed signals: In this case the cross-correlation value is computed between
the received signal and a delayed copy of it.
3. Square-law detection: Here, the auto-correlation value is computed for the
received signal. This method is applicable only when the received signal is
real.

• A probabilistic approach is used to compute the thresholds values needed for

Cross-correlation methods.

• The threshold values corresponding to given false-alarm rates are shown to be

satisfied using numerical examples.

• A detailed analysis of the choice of the appropriate delay value needed for cross-
correlation (delayed signals) method is provided.

• The case of interference signals being present is also included. Here we assume that
the intercepted signal is a mixture of the desired LPI signal and an interference signal

DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142 iii

 with the same modulation scheme.

• Several numerical examples are included to evaluate the detection and estimation
performance of the proposed methods.

Significance of results: The contributions of this work are summarized in the following

• A detailed study of the application of the well-known time-frequency methods to the

detection and estimation of LPI signals has been carried out. The study is supported
with numerical examples providing a clear performance analysis of these methods.

• A novel technique for the estimation of the important LPI parameters based on
cross-correlation methods has been developed.

• A detailed and clear approach for choosing values of the threshold and delays for
cross-correlation techniques has been derived. The computation of these values
depends on the required false-alarm rate and the sampling frequency.

• Performance evaluation of all the proposed techniques for various values of the
Received Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) has been carried out, where it is evident that
the newly proposed techniques enjoy a superior detection and estimation performance.

Future work: Based on this project, we propose the following further research directions

• Improve performance of time-frequency analysis and cross-correlation methods by

employing further signal processing techniques.

• Incorporate both improved time-frequency and cross-correlation methods in new

detection/estimation algorithms for performance improvement especially in the case of
strong interference sources.

• Estimate the direction-of-arrival of the intercepted signal enabling spatial processing

of the signal for further enhancement of performance.

• Investigate the detection and estimation of other types of LPI signals.

• Examine the effect of practical system problems: clock errors and quantization errors.

iv DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142

Sommaire .....

Detection of low probability of intercept radar signals

K.M. Wong; T. Davidson; S. Abdelkader; DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142; R & D
pour la défense Canada – Ottawa; Septembre 2009.

Résultats : Dans le cadre de ce projet, nous abordons le problème de la

détection/estimation des signaux radar LPI. Les faits saillants du projet sont donnés
ci-dessous.

• Deux types de signaux LPI sont étudiés : les signaux à ondes entretenues à modulation
de fréquence (FMCW) et les signaux à code biphase de Barker.

• Des outils temps-fréquence sont introduits pour caractériser les signaux interceptés.
Deux méthodes sont décrites en détail :
1. La méthode de distribution croisée de Wigner-Ville, qui est une modification
de la technique bien connue de Wigner-Ville et consiste à utiliser un signal de
référence conjointement avec le signal reçu pour générer le spectre
temps-fréquence.
2. La méthode de Wigner-Hough, qui applique la transformée de Hough au
spectre de Wigner-Ville pour détecter la présence de signaux LPI.

• Des techniques de corrélation croisée sont proposées à titre de moyen rapide et de très
grande précision de détecter et de caractériser le signal radar intercepté. Différentes
méthodes sont analysées :
1. Récepteurs séparés dans l’espace. Ici, la valeur de corrélation croisée est
calculée pour les signaux reçus de deux (ou plusieurs) récepteurs séparés dans
l’espace.
2. Signaux retardés. Dans ce cas, la valeur de corrélation croisée est calculée
entre le signal reçu et sa reproduction retardée.
3. Détection quadratique. Ici, la valeur d’autocorrélation est calculée pour le
signal reçu. Cette méthode n’est applicable que lorsque le signal reçu est un
signal réel.

• Une approche probabiliste est utilisée pour calculer les valeurs de seuil nécessaires
aux méthodes de corrélation croisée.

• Il est démontré à l’aide d’exemples numériques que les valeurs de seuil correspondant
à des taux de fausses alarmes donnés sont atteintes.

• Une analyse détaillée du choix de la valeur de retard appropriée pour la méthode de

corrélation croisée (signaux retardés) est présentée.

DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142 v

 • Le cas de la présence de signaux brouilleurs est également abordé. Ici, nous
présumons que le signal intercepté est un mélange du signal LPI voulu et d’un signal
brouilleur ayant le même type de modulation.

• Plusieurs exemples numériques sont inclus pour évaluer les performances de

détection et d’estimation des méthodes proposées.

Portée : Les contributions de ce travail sont résumées ci-dessous.

• Une étude détaillée de l’application des méthodes temps-fréquence bien connues à la

détection et à l’estimation de signaux LPI a été effectuée. L’étude est étayée par des
exemples numériques donnant lieu à une analyse claire des performances de ces
méthodes.

• Une nouvelle technique pour l’estimation des paramètres LPI importants basée sur
des méthodes de corrélation croisée a été élaborée.

• Une approche détaillée et claire pour le choix des valeurs du seuil et des retards pour
les techniques de corrélation croisée a été dérivée. Le calcul de ces valeurs est
fonction du taux de fausses alarmes et du taux d’échantillonnage.

• L’évaluation des performances de toutes les techniques proposées pour diverses

valeurs du rapport signal/bruit (S/B) reçu a été effectuée, et il est évident que les
techniques nouvellement proposées jouissent de performances de détection et
d’estimation supérieures.

Recherches futures : Compte tenu de ce projet, nous proposons les directions suivantes
pour les recherches futures :

• Améliorer les performances des méthodes d’analyse temps-fréquence et de

corrélation croisée en utilisant d’autres techniques de traitement des signaux.

• Intégrer des méthodes améliorées temps-fréquence et des méthodes améliorées de

corrélation croisée à de nouveaux algorithmes de détection/estimation en vue
d’améliorer les performances, notamment dans le cas des sources de brouillage fortes.

• Estimer l’angle d’incidence du signal intercepté pour permettre le traitement spatial

du signal afin d’améliorer encore les performances.

• Étudier la détection et l’estimation d’autres types de signaux LPI.

• Examiner l’effet des problèmes système pratiques (erreurs d’horloge et erreurs de

quantification).

vi DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142

Table of contents
Abstract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Resume . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Executive summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Sommaire .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v

Table of contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 LPI Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

3 Algorithms for the Detection of LPI Signals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3.1 Cross Wigner-Ville Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

3.2 Wigner-Hough Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

3.3 Cross-Correlation Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

3.4 Square-Law Detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4 Performance Evaluation of the Proposed Detection Methods . . . . . . . . . . . 18

5 Parameter Estimation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

6 Detection in the Presence of Interference Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7 Summary and Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
List of figures
Figure 1: Time-Frequency distribution, test signal, SNR -3 dB . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Figure 2: First iteration, cross Wigner-Ville, SNR -10 dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Figure 3: Last iteration, cross Wigner-Ville, SNR -10 dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Figure 4: Wigner-Hough algorithm, line representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Figure 5: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR -10 dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Figure 6: Histogram: spatial cross-correlation of the noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Figure 7: CDF: spatial cross-correlation of the noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Figure 8: Histogram: time-delayed cross-correlation of the noise . . . . . . . . . 13

Figure 9: CDF: time-delayed cross-correlation of the noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Figure 10: Histogram: mean value of the noise squared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Figure 11: CDF: mean value of the noise squared . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Figure 12: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR -10 dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

Figure 13: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR 10 dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Figure 14: Wigner-Hough spectrum, signal plus interference . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Figure 15: Wigner-Hough spectrum, strong interference signal . . . . . . . . . . . 31

List of tables
Table 1: Barker codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Table 2: Detection rate, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs, 1024 samples . . . . 18

Table 3: Detection rate, FMCW signals, 1000 simulation runs, 2048 samples . . . 19

Table 4: Detection rate, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs, 2048 samples . . . . . 19

Table 5: False alarm rate, 1000 simulation runs, 512 samples . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Table 6: False alarm rate, 1000 simulation runs, 2048 samples . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Table 7: Cross Wigner-Ville, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs . . . . . . . . . 24

Table 8: Wigner-Hough, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Table 9: Cross-correlation, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs . . . . . . . . . . 27

Table 10: Time-frequency methods, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs . . . . . . . 28

Table 11: Cross-correlation, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Table 12: Wigner-Hough, 100 Simulation Runs, SNR -10 dB, INR -5 dB . . . . . . 30
 This page is intentionally left blank

x DRDC Ottawa CR 2009-142

1 Introduction
Conventional radar systems are known to transmit short-duration pulses with high-peak
power. The design of these radars was based solely on better detection of targets in clut-
ter. Later, it became more important to consider the threats of intercepting and detecting
the radar signal. In the modern battlefield, radars are facing more and more serious threats
from Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) and Anti-Radiation Missiles (ARM). Therefore,
an important feature of a modern radar system is the ability “to see and not to be seen” [7].
This has motivated research in the direction of developing new radars that transmit signal
waveforms which are difficult to intercept. The goal is to keep the radar capabilities of
detecting targets while minimizing the probability of being detected by ECM of enemies.
To achieve this goal, the radar employs in its transmissions what is known as Low Proba-
bility of Intercept (LPI) signals [3], [10], [12]. These signals are designed to be difficult to
intercept by means of using wider frequency bandwidth (wideband), frequency hopping,
using a frequency-modulated continuous-wave signal, and using only the minimum power
required for the task. The most common design of LPI signals is pulse compression, which
reduces the peak transmitted power while maintaining the range and resolution of the radar.
The Electronic Support Measures (ESM) receiver must operate when both the high power
short-duration (conventional) signals as well as low power long-duration (LPI) signals are
present. This requires special methods for detection and characterization of the received
signal at the intercept receiver. Moreover, the implementation of these methods should be
suitable for real time processing.

In this project, we propose different techniques for the interception receiver to deal with
LPI radar signals. We introduce different methods for the detection of these signals and
examine their performance at low SNR values. We also propose ways to estimate the
modulation parameters of the intercepted signals. We study the case when interference
sources are present at the same time and frequency range as the desired radar signal, and
test the performance of our methods in this scenario.

In the next section we describe in great details the structure and different characteristics
of LPI signals. Following that we introduce our methods for detection and estimation and
evaluate the performance of these methods with various numerical examples.

2 LPI Signals
There are two types of signals commonly used for LPI radar transmissions; the Frequency
Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) and the bi-phase compound Barker code signals
[8]. The FMCW signal, sometimes called a chirp, is characterized by a constant amplitude
and a frequency modulation that is linearly changing with time
β 2
)
s(t) = e j2π(αt+ 2 t (1)

1
The instantaneous frequency f i (t) of this signal is
dφ(t)
fi (t) = = α + βt (2)
dt

where φ(t) = (αt + β2 t 2 ). At the receiver, the LPI signal is accompanied by a noise signal
n(t), which is assumed to be a circular complex Gaussian process with zero mean and unit
variance. Hence, the received LPI signal y(t) is given by

y(t) = s(t) + n(t) (3)

As an example, we generate a FMCW signal with a unit amplitude and a linear frequency
modulation that varies from 0 to 25MHz in an interval of approximately 10µs. Figure
1 shows the time-frequency analysis using the Wigner-Ville distribution of the received
signal assuming an SNR value of -3 dB.1

WV, lin. scale, imagesc, Threshold=5%

25
800

700
20

600
Frequency [MHz]

15
500

400
10
300

5 200

100
0
2 4 6 8 10
Time [µs]

Figure 1: Time-Frequency distribution, test signal, SNR -3 dB

Another pulse compression technique is achieved by phase coding. The type most com-
monly used is the bi-phase modulation, where the phase of the carrier signal is changed by
1
In this work, we fix the noise power to 1, and change the signal power to realize different SNR values.
The signal is generated with a certain magnitude A such that it satisfies the required signal power P = A 2 .

2
0◦ or 180◦ according to a certain technique. The technique used to determine the phase of
the signal is known as Barker codes, which have the advantages of achieving the smallest
possible sidelobe levels of the autocorrelation functions as compared to the mainlobe value
[5], [13]. A Barker code is a sequence a j of N values of +1 and −1, such that


N−v
| a j a j+v | ≤ 1 for all 1 ≤ v < N and j = 1, · · · , N (4)
j=1

A list of known Barker codes up to reversal of digits and negation is displayed in Table 1.

The longest available Barker code is of length 13 [4]. To achieve longer codes we may
compound various combinations of Barker codes.

Length Codes
B2 2 +1 -1 OR (+1 +1)
B3 3 +1 +1 -1
B4 4 +1 -1 +1 +1 OR (+1 -1 -1 -1)
B5 5 +1 +1 +1 -1 +1
B7 7 +1 +1 +1 -1 -1 +1 -1
B11 11 +1 +1 +1 -1 -1 -1 +1 -1 -1 +1 -1
B13 13 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 -1 -1 +1 +1 -1 +1 -1 +1

Table 1: Barker codes

For example a code of length 65 can be generated by combining two Barker codes of length
13 and 5. The compound code B13×5 is related to the outer code B5 and the inner code B13
as follows
B13×5 = B5 ⊗ B13 (5)
where ⊗ represents the Kronecker product defined as
⎡ ⎤
a11 B · · · a1n B
⎢ ⎥
A ⊗ B = ⎣ ... . . ..
. . ⎦ (6)
am1 B · · · amn B
where A and B are two matrices of size m × n and p × q, respectively.

In this project, we test the performance of our proposed methods using radar signals of
both the FMCW and bi-phase Barker codes types.

3 Algorithms for the Detection of LPI Signals

In this section, we introduce some techniques that are suitable for the detection of LPI radar
signals. These techniques can be classified into two categories; time-frequency methods

3
and cross-correlation methods. Time-frequency tools are particularly useful for the case of
FMCW signals, where we can exploit the time-frequency properties of the signal to detect
its presence even in the case of very low SNR values. Cross-correlation methods have two
main advantages; they enjoy fast processing which increases only linearly with increasing
the sampling points, and they can be realized using simple hardware implementations.
Cross-correlation methods are based on generating a copy of the LPI signal either by the
use of another receiver channel or by artificially introducing a calculated delay on the
received signal. Then, the cross-correlation process is performed on the received signal
and the generated copy to detect the presence of the signal. Both the time-frequency and
cross-correlation techniques are discussed in greater detail in the following subsections.

3.1 Cross Wigner-Ville Distribution

The Wigner-Ville distribution is a well known technique to study the time-frequency char-
acteristics of a signal, and this technique can be adopted as a detection method of FMCW
signals. The Wigner-Ville distribution is defined as
 ∞
W (t, f ) = y(t + τ)y∗ (t − τ)e− j4π f τ dτ (7)
−∞

However, the performance of the conventional Wigner-Ville distribution is degraded at low

SNR values [6], [9]. Therefore, we suggest an alternative approach based on the idea that
underlies the Wigner-Ville technique. In our approach, we use an iterative algorithm to
compute the cross Wigner-Ville distribution and estimate the instantaneous frequency. The
algorithm is described as follows:

1. Obtain an initial estimate of the instantaneous frequency of the received signal using
the peaks of the Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) or the conventional Wigner-
Ville distribution.

2. Form a unit amplitude, frequency modulated reference signal y r (t)

t
−∞ f i (t)dt
ˆ
yr (t) = e j2π (8)

where fˆi (t) is the initial instantaneous frequency estimate.

3. Compute the cross Wigner-Ville distribution W X (t, f ) between the received signal
and the reference signal
 ∞
W X (t, f ) = y(t + τ)y∗r (t − τ)e− j4π f τ dτ (9)
−∞

4. Estimate the instantaneous frequency from the cross Wigner-Ville distribution.

4
 5. Stop the iterations if the relative error in the estimated instantaneous frequency pa-
rameters, α̂ and β̂ is less than 5% of the previous estimates. Otherwise, go to step
2.

The method is declared successful in detecting the presence of a signal if it converges in

less than 20 iterations.

A detailed convergence analysis of this method is available in [11], where it is proven that
the method will converge for asymptotically long signals. It is worth mentioning that each
iteration of the algorithm computes the Wigner-Ville distribution which is implemented us-
ing Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), and hence the computational complexity of this method
is of order n log n where 2n is the number of sampling points.

As an example, we test the performance of this method using a FMCW signal generated
using the following parameters: the instantaneous frequency changes from 20 MHz to
20.5117 MHz in an observation interval of 2048 samples with sampling frequency f s = 200
MHz. This means that α = 20 MHz and β = 50 MHz/ms. The SNR used to simulate the
received signal is −10 dB. In Figures 2 and 3, we show the time-frequency distribution of
the received signal for the first and last iteration of this algorithm, respectively. We can see
the enhancement of the spectrum obtained using our technique (the number of iterations
used in this example is 5).

3.2 Wigner-Hough Transform

A modification to the Wigner-Ville distribution method to enhance its detection capabilities
is the application of Hough transform to the Wigner-Ville distribution [1]. The resulting
transform, known as Wigner-Hough transform, is given by

 ∞ 
∗ − j4π(α+βt)τ
W H(α, β) = y(t + τ)y (t − τ)e dτ dt (10)
T −∞

where α + βt represents the instantaneous frequency with β being the sweep rate. The
integration is computed for every possible value of α and β. The implementation of this
estimator is illustrated in Figure 4, and is described as follows. For every point (t, f ) we
integrate the Wigner-Ville distribution with respect to t for all possible values of α and
β. In Figure 4, we display a single instance of the algorithm for a certain value of α
and β, which represents a certain line ( f = α + βt) in the time-frequency plane and we
integrate the Wigner-Ville distribution along this line. For faster implementation, we use
polar representation (ρ, θ), where ρ is the magnitude of the normal to the line measured
from the origin point (0, 0) and θ is the angle of the normal to the line measured from the
time axis. This transformation from (α, β) to (ρ, θ) is crucial because we have an infinite
range of value of (α, β) over which we need to compute the Wigner-Hough transform. In
polar coordinates, however, we have a finite range of values of ρ ∈ [0, ρmax ] and θ ∈ [0, 2π],

5
 WV, lin. scale, imagesc, Threshold=5%
25
1000

900
20
800

700
Frequency [MHz]

15
600

500
10
400

300
5
200

100
0
2 4 6 8 10
Time [µs]

Figure 2: First iteration, cross Wigner-Ville, SNR -10 dB


where ρmax = (m2 + n2 ) is determined by the size of the Wigner-Ville spectrum (m is the
number time points and n is the number of frequency points used to construct the Wigner-
Ville distribution).

After computing the Wigner-Hough transform in polar representations, we estimate the co-
ordinates (ρ p , θ p) of the peak point, and transform this value to (α p , β p) using the relations

α = ρ/ sinθ
(11)
β = − cot θ

The Wigner-Hough transform enjoys the advantage of emphasizing the peak values used to
detect and estimate the signal frequency parameters. It both detects the presence of a signal
and estimates its important parameters (the nominal carrier frequency, and the sweep rate).
The Wigner-Hough estimator can be shown to be asymptotically efficient, which means
that it reaches the Cramer-Rao bound (the lower bound for unbiased estimators) as the
observation interval tends to infinity. Also, the Wigner-Hough method has a better SNR
threshold as compared to the conventional Wigner-Ville distribution. 2 Furthermore, this
2 The SNR threshold is the SNR value below which the method fails to detect the presence of a signal.

6
 Cross Wigner−Ville, last iteration, −10 dB
100 2000

90
1800
80
1600
70
1400
Frequency [MHz]

60
1200
50
1000
40
800
30
600
20
400
10
200
0
2 4 6 8 10
Time [µs]

Figure 3: Last iteration, cross Wigner-Ville, SNR -10 dB

threshold is related to the observation time and hence can be enhanced by increasing the
observation window [2].

The drawback of this method is the long processing time needed to compute the Hough
transform. Furthermore, the processing time increases significantly with increasing number
of sampling points, which makes it impractical in some scenarios to enhance the detection
performance by increasing the number of samples.

As an example of the operation of the Wigner-Hough method, we use a test FMCW signal
with the same parameters as specified in the previous subsection. To reduce the processing
time, we decreased the number of samples to 1024 (in the previous subsection, we used
2048 samples). In Figure 5, we show the Wigner-Hough spectrum of our received test
signal, where we can see the strong peak indicating the presence of a radar signal.

7
 Frequency
Normal to the line

C
A lin
e wit
hac
ertain
value
s for
( α, β
)
E
ψ (t, f )
D
α
ρ

ψ θ
A

Time

Figure 4: Wigner-Hough algorithm, line representation

8
 Figure 5: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR -10 dB

9
3.3 Cross-Correlation Techniques
In this class of algorithms, we make use of the possibility of employing two (or more)
spatially separated receivers at the Electronic Support Measures (ESM) site. The main
idea behind this technique is described as follows. Let y i (t) represent the output of the ith
receiver, we have
y1 (t) = s(t) + n1(t)
(12)
y2 (t) = s(t − τ) + n2 (t)
where s(t) is the LPI signal, which can be a FMCW or a Barker code signal, τ is the time
delay for the signal to propagate from one receiver to the next, while the noise terms (n 1 (t)
and n2 (t)) are assumed independent. Hence, the cross-correlation between the two outputs
will cancel-out the noise component while constructing the signal autocorrelation function.

Using this algorithm, an LPI radar signal is detected if the output of the cross-correlation
module exceeds a fixed threshold.

The value of the threshold is set in a probabilistic approach using previous observations of
the noise waveform. We construct a histogram (Figure 6) of the recorded absolute values of
the cross-correlation between the noise waveforms obtained from the two receivers. From
this histogram, we can build an empirical Cumulative Density Function (CDF) as illustrated
in Figure 7.

The threshold is chosen using the CDF such that we satisfy a certain false-alarm rate. In
our example, we choose a threshold of 0.077 to satisfy a false-alarm rate of 5%.

If employing more than one receiver at the ESM side is not physically possible, we propose
a single receiver alternative for the aforementioned technique.

In this case, the cross-correlation function is computed between the output of the receiver
y(t) and its delayed version y(t − τ). Here, τ represents the time delay, which can be
arbitrary set to ensure that the noise terms have no correlation while preserving signal
correlation.

The basic idea in this technique is the fact that the noise is temporally as well as spatially
uncorrelated, and hence the cross-correlation between y(t) and y(t − τ) will cancel-out the
noise component and build the signal autocorrelation function.

In principle, this algorithm enables the intercept receiver to have a built-in matched filter.
While a general matched-filter receiver correlates the received signal plus noise with a
locally generated signal, this algorithm correlates signal plus noise with a delayed version
of the signal plus an independent noise input. In this way, the intercept receiver can detect
the LPI signal even at very low SNR values.

Similar to the case of employing more receivers, we need to choose a threshold for detec-
tion. We use previous observations to compute the absolute cross-correlation value between

10
 mean noise spatial
250

200

150

100

50

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
*
Cross−correlation value E |n1(t) n2(t)|

Figure 6: Histogram: spatial cross-correlation of the noise

the noise signal and its delayed version. These values are then used to build a histogram
and consequently the CDF, as illustrated in Figures 8 and 9, respectively. Using the CDF
plot, we can choose the threshold value that corresponds to a certain false-alarm rate. In
our example, we choose a threshold value of 0.08 to satisfy a false-alarm rate of less than
5%.

11
 Empirical CDF Noise cross (spatial)
1

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6
F(x)

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
x

Figure 7: CDF: spatial cross-correlation of the noise

12
 mean noise delayed
200

180

160

140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
*
Cross−correlation value E |n (t) n(t+τ)|

Figure 8: Histogram: time-delayed cross-correlation of the noise

13
 Empirical CDF Noise cross (delayed)
1

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6
F(x)

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
x

Figure 9: CDF: time-delayed cross-correlation of the noise

14
3.4 Square-Law Detection
In some scenarios, we may use auto-correlation techniques (square-law detection meth-
ods) for the detection of LPI radar signals. In particular, if we have the scenario that the
transmitted signal is purely real

t2
s(t) = sin 2π(αt + β ) (13)
2

we may end up with a situation where we receive a real signal embedded in complex
noise. In this case, the square-law detection method may be applied taking advantage of the
circularly Gaussian complex property of the noise. This property means that the variance
of the real part of the noise is the same as the variance of the imaginary part resulting in

E{n2 (t)} = E{(nR + jnI )2 }

(14)
= E{n2R + 2 jnR nI − n2I } = 0

where E denotes the expectation operator, and nR and nI are the real and imaginary parts of
the noise, respectively. On the other hand, we have that

E{s2 (t)} = p (15)

where p is the signal power. Hence, the LPI can be detected if the output of the square-law
detection module exceeds a certain threshold.

The threshold is chosen in the same probabilistic manner, where we record the values of
the mean of the squared noise samples. The histogram and CDF are constructed (Figures
10 and 11, respectively) and we choose the threshold value from the CDF plot to satisfy
the desired false-alarm rate.

In our example, we choose a threshold value of 0.11 to satisfy a 5% false-alarm rate.

It is worth mentioning that this method can be realized using hardware implementations
as follows. First, the received signal y(t) is boosted using a Low-Noise Amplifier (LNA),
then it is processed by a square-law circuit element. The expectation operation in Eqs.
(14) and (15) is approximated by integration over time, and the output of the integrator
(which is proportional to the signal power after boosting) is passed to a comparator. A
signal is detected when the output of the integrator is greater than a pre-set threshold,
which is chosen to satisfy a fixed false-alarm rate. This method is simple and effective
and its performance can be tested easily. However, a drawback of this algorithm is the fact
that signal parameters (instantaneous frequency and sweep rate for example) have to be
estimated separately by other methods.

15
 mean noise squared
250

200

150

100

50

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18
2
Cross−correlation value E |n (t)|

Figure 10: Histogram: mean value of the noise squared

16
 Empirical CDF Noise squared
1

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.6
F(x)

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1

0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18
x

Figure 11: CDF: mean value of the noise squared

17
4 Performance Evaluation of the Proposed
Detection Methods
In this section, we examine the performance of the proposed detection methods under var-
ious scenarios. The signals used to test the performance are the FMCW and Barker codes
signals described in previous sections. Various numerical examples are included in this
section to evaluate the detection performance under different scenarios.

Example 1
In this example we use a FMCW signal with modulation parameters: α = 20 MHz and
β = 500 MHz/ms. The sampling frequency is 200 MHz, and the number of samples used
is 1024. We vary the SNR value from −10 dB to 10 dB and use 100 independent simula-
tion runs to compute the detection rate of the different proposed methods. The results are
displayed in Table 2, where we can see the excellent detection performance of all of the
suggested methods.

Method −10 dB −5 dB 0 dB 5 dB 10 dB
Cross Wigner-Ville 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Wigner-Hough 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Cross-delayed 99% 99% 100% 100% 100%
Cross-spaced 99% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Square-law 99% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Table 2: Detection rate, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs, 1024 samples

It is worth mentioning that the cross-correlation techniques and the square-law method
(when applicable) have relatively low complexity in detecting the LPI signal. While the
time-frequency techniques (cross Wigner-Ville and Wigner-Hough) have much higher com-
plexity, they enjoy the capability of characterizing the intercepted signal by estimating the
modulation parameters α and β as we will discuss in the next section.

Example 2
We use the same FMCW signal, but we reduce the SNR values to start from −20 dB, while
the number of samples is increased to 2048. The results are averaged over 1000 simulation

18
runs and are listed in Table 3.

Method −20 dB −15 dB −10 dB

Cross Wigner-Ville 0% 10% 100%
Wigner-Hough 10% 30% 100%
Cross-delayed 99.8% 99.9% 100%
Cross-spaced 99.9% 99.9% 100%
Square-law 64.1% 84.1% 99.9%

Table 3: Detection rate, FMCW signals, 1000 simulation runs, 2048 samples

From this example, we conclude that the performance of the time-frequency methods (cross
Wigner-Ville and Wigner-Hough) deteriorates at very low SNR values. Although it is the-
oretically possible to enhance the performance of the Wigner-Hough method by increas-
ing the number of samples, the processing time needed becomes prohibitively high when
the number of samples exceeds 2048. On the other hand, the performance of the cross-
correlation methods does not change much with reducing the SNR values. Moreover, the
processing time needed increases only linearly with increasing number of samples and
hence better detection rates can be achieved by simply increasing the sampling points. This
observation makes the use of cross-correlation techniques more favorable for fast detection
of FMCW signals at low SNR values.

Example 3
In this example we change the test signal, and we use bi-phase Barker code signals gener-
ated as a compound code B13×5 as described in previous sections. The pulse width is set
to 6.5 µs, the pulse repetition interval is 100 µs, the carrier frequency is 25 MHz, and the
sampling frequency is 170 MHz. The SNR varies from −20 dB to 0 dB, and we use 2048
sampling points. All results are averaged over 100 simulation runs and are displayed in
Table 4.
Method −20 dB −15 dB −10 dB −5 dB 0 dB
Cross Wigner-Ville 0% 9% 100% 100% 100%
Wigner-Hough 8% 23% 100 % 100% 100%
Cross-delayed 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Cross-spaced 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
Square-law 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

Table 4: Detection rate, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs, 2048 samples

To evaluate the false-alarm rate of our suggested methods, we use a noise-only signal gen-
erated as a complex Gaussian process with zero-mean and unit-variance. We used 1000
independent simulations runs and recorded the times where a radar signal is erroneously

19
declared present. The threshold values used are those obtained in the previous section,
which have been estimated based on our previous noise observations using 512 sampling
points.3 The results are listed in Table 5.

Method False-Alarm Rate

Cross-delayed 5.1%
Cross-spaced 3.5%
Square-law 0.8%

Table 5: False alarm rate, 1000 simulation runs, 512 samples

We can reduce the false-alarm rate further by increasing the sampling points (recall that this
does not increase much the processing time of the cross-correlation methods). By increas-
ing the sampling points, we average the cross-correlation value of the noise waveform over
many samples and hence the result approaches the true expected value of zero (the noise
signal is assumed to be uncorrelated). The results for 2048 sampling points are displayed
in Table 6.

Method False-Alarm Rate

Cross-delayed 0.1%
Cross-spaced 0%
Square-law 0%

Table 6: False alarm rate, 1000 simulation runs, 2048 samples

It is worth mentioning that the time-frequency techniques (cross Wigner-Ville and Wigner-
Hough) have zero false-alarm rate because having a unique peak in the time-frequency
distribution is only possible when there is a true signal.

5 Parameter Estimation
Another aspect of the project is signal characterization by estimating the important mod-
ulation parameters of the intercepted radar signal. In this section, we examine the perfor-
mance of the cross Wigner-Ville and the Wigner-Hough methods as time-frequency tools
to estimate the frequency modulation parameters α and β. We also propose the use of
cross-correlation techniques for parameter estimation as well. The estimation accuracy of
the different methods is evaluated using various numerical examples.

3 Note
that in our simulations, we always fix the noise power to unity and realize different SNR values by
simply changing the radar signal power.

20
Time-Frequency Techniques

The parameters values can be estimated from the cross Wigner-Ville method by means of
data fitting to a linear model. From the Wigner-Ville distribution, we find the frequency
position of the maximum point of the spectrum at each time slot. These points are recorded,
and then fitted to a linear model to estimate the modulation parameters α and β.

The Wigner-Hough method utilizes a different approach to estimate the signal modulation
parameters. For every possible value of α and β, the Wigner-Hough transform integrates
the Wigner-Ville distribution with respect to time, and record the value of the integration.
The maximum value occurs at the true value of α and β. This approach is better imple-
mented using the polar representation of the line equation, and at the end we transform
back to compute the values of α and β as explained in previous sections.

Cross-Correlation Methods

Although the use of cross-correlation methods is not common for direct estimation of sig-
nal parameters, we have been motivated by the superior detection rate of these techniques
to test the application of these methods to parameter estimation. The idea is that the com-
puted cross-correlation value between the received signal and the generated delayed copy
is proportional to the signal parameters as follows. Let y 1 (t) be the intercepted LPI signal,
and generate a delayed version of the received signal y2 (t) = y1 (t − τ), where τ is the in-
troduced artificial delay. For a chirp signal, τ is chosen not so small that noise components
may not cancel out and not so large that signal correlation is not attenuated. A reason-
able value for τ that is used in our simulation is 13 samples. In the case of Barker codes,
however, a careful choice of τ is critical and will be discussed in detail at the end of this
section.

The cross-correlation C between y1 (t) and y∗2 (t) will cancel out the noise component (noise
is assumed to be temporally white) and we are left with a term that is function on the
signal parameters. In the following, we explain in more details the steps of the estimation
algorithm for the cases of FMCW and bi-phase Barker coded signals.

In the case of FMCW signals, we have

2 /2)
y1 (t) = e j2π(αt+βt + n(t) (16)
The receiver will delay this signal with τ samples to generate
2 /2)
y2 (t) = y1 (t − τ) = e j2π(α(t−τ)+β(t−τ) + n(t − τ) (17)
We replace the expectation operator with the time average, and we compute the cross-
correlation value to be

21
 N−1
C = y1 (t)y∗2(t)
t=0
N−1 j2π(ατ−βτ2 /2+βτt) (18)
= t=0 e
where the noise terms are cancelled since we assume that the noise signal is uncorrelated.
Equation (18) can be simplified to

2 /2) 1 − e j2πβNτ
C = e j2π(ατ−βτ (19)
1 − e j2πβτ
which is function of the desired parameters α and β. We first estimate β by equating the
magnitude value of both sides of equation (19) to get

 
 1 − e j2πβNτ 
 
|C| =   (20)
 1−e j2πβτ 

For a measured value of |C| at a certain τ, we calculate β as estimate from equation (20).
This estimate of β is substituted into equation (19) to estimate the value of α.

In the case of bi-phase signals, we have that the received signal is given by

y1 (t) = BL×M (t)e j2π fct + n(t) (21)

where fc is the carrier frequency, and BL×M is a compound Barker code with BL and BM as
the inner and outer codes, respectively. The delayed version of the signal is given by

y2 (t) = y1 (t − τ) = BL×M (t − τ)e j2π fc (t−τ) + n(t − τ) (22)

Hence, the cross-correlation between y1 (t) and y∗2 (t) is given by

N−1
C = y1 (t)y∗2(t)
t=0
N−1 − j2π( fc (t−τ)) (23)
C = t=0 BL×M (t)e
j2π( fct) B
L×M (t − τ)e

This is equivalent to
N−1
C = e j2π fc τ t=0 BL×M (t)BL×M (t − τ)
τ (24)
= re j2π f c

N−1
where r = t=0 BL×M (t)BL×M (t − τ) is a real number. We can eliminate r by dividing
equation (24) by the absolute value of C

 C
C̃ = = e j2π fc τ (25)
|C|

22
and we can estimate the carrier frequency fc from the angle of C̃. However, we may
have different values of fc due to the ambiguity inherent in e j2π fc τ where adding integer
multiples of 2π to the exponent does not change the value of the expression. Therefore,
we may have the case when different estimates of the carrier frequency are obtained using
the cross-correlation method. We propose that, in this case, we test the output at each of
the candidate frequencies and detect the presence of a signal component using the cross-
correlation methods as a detection tool. Note that these methods are very fast and this
technique does not impose a significant computational load on the processor.

Here, we describe our approach to choose τ such that we eliminate the aforementioned am-
biguity. First, we note that τ has to be short enough that we do not lose signal correlation. 4
We consider equation (25), which is used for estimating the carrier frequency for Barker
coded signals using cross-correlation methods

C̃ = e j2π fc τ

We compute ∠C̃, which lies in the range of [0, 2π] and equate it to 2π f c τ. No error occurs
if 2π fc τ is in the same range [0, 2π]. Hence, our criterion is to choose τ such that 2π f c τ ∈
[0, 2π]. Replacing τ by nts where n is the number of delay samples and ts is the sampling
time, we get
0 < 2π fc nts ≤ 2π (26)
This is equivalent to
n
0 < fc
≤1 (27)
fs
We have the condition on the number of delay samples n
fs
0<n≤ (28)
fc
We know that f c ∈ [0, 0.5 fs], hence we have

0<n≤2 (29)

In other words, a delay of 1 or 2 samples will guarantee that the true carrier frequency
can be estimated from the basic value of ∠C̃ (without adding multiple integers of 2π), and
we have eliminated the ambiguity effect. Note that this choice also guarantees that the
signal cross-correlation is not significantly reduced by the Barker codes autocorrelation
properties.

In the following we provide numerical evaluation of the estimation performance of both

time-frequency and cross-correlation methods using different examples.
4 Barker codes are chosen because they have very lowsidelobes in the autocorrelation function. Any large
delay will significantly reduce the correlation value. For example, the ratio of the second sidelobe peak (a
1
delay of 1 sample) to the mainlobe peak is approximately the code length .

23
Example 1
In this example, we test the performance of time-frequency methods using a FMCW signal
with modulation parameters: α = 20 MHz and β = 50 MHz/ms. The sampling frequency
is 200 MHz. We vary the SNR value from −10 dB to 10 dB. We use 2048 samples for
cross Wigner-Ville and 1024 samples for Wigner-Hough. We run the algorithm 100 times
and record the relative error in the estimate of α and β. The results obtained for the cross
Wigner-Ville and Wigner-Hough methods are listed in Table 7 and Table 8, respectively.
As we can see from Table 7, the cross Wigner-Ville method gives relatively poor estimates
at very low SNR values, but its performance is significantly improved with increasing the
SNR value.

Relative Error -10 dB -5 dB 0 dB 5 dB 10 dB

α 0.1449 0.0888 0.0633 0.0212 0.0147
β 0.4296 0.2615 0.1125 0.0473 0.0245

Table 7: Cross Wigner-Ville, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs

The relative error in the estimates (Table 8) for the Wigner-Hough method is the same (up
to the fourth decimal place) within the range of SNR values tested (-10 dB to 10 dB).

Relative Error -10 dB to 10 dB

α 0.0194
β 0.0461

Table 8: Wigner-Hough, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs

This peculiar behavior is examined in Figures 12 and 13, where we plot the Wigner-Hough
spectrum for SNR values of -10 dB, and 10 dB, respectively. We can see from the figures
that the position of the peak (which is used to estimate α and β) is the same in both figures.
This behavior is expected as the Wigner-Hough method is known to enjoy a low SNR
threshold. The method searches for lines of maximum values in the Wigner-Ville time-
frequency spectrum. Since the noise time-frequency distribution is scattered, it does not
affect location the line of maximum value in the time-frequency plane. Therefore, the
basic component of error is due to quantization errors in the search for these lines in the
time-frequency plane.

It is worth mentioning that using a 1.9 GHz Pentium processor and 1 GB RAM, the cross
Wigner-Ville method takes approximately 4 S to estimate the signal parameters, while the
Wigner-Hough method takes about 45 S to do the same job (the number of samples is 512).

24
 Figure 12: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR -10 dB

25
 Figure 13: Wigner-Hough spectrum, SNR 10 dB

26
Example 2
In this example, we examine the performance of cross-correlation methods using the same
FMCW test signal. Because of the excellent detection performance of cross-correlation
methods, we start from a very low SNR value (-30 dB) and record the relative errors in
estimating α and β. The results are averaged over 100 simulation runs and we have used
10000 samples, which is possible since the computational complexity of this method in-
creases only linearly with the sampling size. The delayed copy of the signal is obtained
by delaying the intercepted signal by τ = 13 samples. In Table 9, we display the obtained
results.

SNR Relative Error in α Relative Error in β

-30 dB 0.3660 0.3652
-25 dB 0.3740 0.1396
-20 dB 0.1040 0.0368
-15 dB < 10−4 0.0081
-10 dB < 10−4 0.0028
-5 dB < 10−4 0.0020
0 dB < 10−4 0.0020
5 dB < 10−4 0.0020
10 dB < 10−4 0.0020
Table 9: Cross-correlation, FMCW signals, 100 simulation runs

Cross-correlation methods are very fast which is a big advantage that makes them more
favorable in detection and estimation of radar signals. Using the same hardware as de-
scribed in the previous example, cross-correlation methods need about 30 mS to estimate
the parameters of the intercepted signals.

Example 3
In this example, we examine the performance of time-frequency methods using the bi-
phase Barker coded signal described in Example 3 of Section 4. The results are averaged
over 100 simulation runs, and the number of samples used is 2048 for the cross Wigner-
Ville method and 1024 for the Wigner-Hough transform. The relative errors in estimating
the carrier frequency are displayed in Table 10.5

5 Estimating
the Barker code itself can be implemented in a subsequent module after estimating the car-
rier frequency. The baseband signal is obtained by filtering the received signal using our estimated carrier
frequency. This baseband signal can then be classified into one of the known Barker codes.

27
 SNR Cross Wigner-Ville Wigner-Hough
-20 dB Failed Failed
-15 dB Failed Failed
-10 dB 0.6791 0.1732
-5 dB 0.5865 0.1467
0 dB 0.3998 0.0263
5 dB 0.3549 0.0155
10 dB 0.3527 0.0137

Table 10: Time-frequency methods, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs

Example 4
In this example, we examine the performance of cross-correlation methods using the Barker
coded signal described in Example 3. Although there is an inherent ambiguity in the esti-
mation of f c , we have overcome this problem by a careful choice of the delay τ = 2 samples
as discussed in the previous section. The relative errors in estimating the carrier frequency
fc as the SNR changes from −30 dB to 10 dB are displayed in Table 11.

SNR Relative Error in fc

-30 dB 0.4472
-25 dB 0.4667
-20 dB 0.4236
-15 dB 0.4146
-10 dB 0.3699
-5 dB 0.2033
0 dB 0.0621
5 dB 0.0215
10 dB 0.0102

Table 11: Cross-correlation, Barker codes, 100 simulation runs

From these examples, we observe the excellent performance of cross-correlation methods,

which is not affected by reducing the SNR value. This feature and the low computational
load of cross-correlation methods make them more favorable than time-frequency methods
in dealing with LPI signals. However, a serious drawback of cross-correlation methods is
that the estimation algorithm depends on the modulation scheme of the intercepted signal.
In other words, FMCW signals and bi-phase Barker codes signals have different estimation
steps, and in the absence of knowledge of the modulation scheme of the intercepted signal
we may not be able to directly apply cross-correlation methods for parameter estimations.
On the other hand, time-frequency methods display the time-frequency properties of the
signal, where we can easily identify the modulation scheme to be either linear frequency

28
modulation (FMCW signal) or constant frequency modulation (Barker codes). This obser-
vation may motivate a direction for future investigation, where we combine the advantages
of both time-frequency and cross-correlation methods. We may first apply time-frequency
methods (less accurate estimation) to just identify the modulation scheme, and then ap-
ply the cross-correlation estimation algorithm (excellent estimation performance) that is
suitable for this specific modulation scheme.

6 Detection in the Presence of Interference

Sources
In this section, we study the case of detecting the desired LPI signal in the presence of an
interference source. We assume the most difficult scenario where the interference signal
has the same modulation scheme as the desired LPI signal. In particular, we assume a
FMCW interference signal with modulation parameters αi and βi different from those of
the desired signal (αs and βs).

The method that is most suitable for this scenario is the Wigner-Hough method. It detects
the presence of all signals as peaks in the spectrum while suppressing any cross terms
between the two signals. However, as we mentioned earlier, the performance of this method
deteriorates at very low SNR values unless we increase the number of samples which is
not practical since it significantly increases the required processing time. Although cross-
correlation techniques are very fast and can be made more accurate with linearly increasing
computational load by simply increasing the sampling point, their direct application to
this scenario is complicated due to the increased number of unknown parameters (signal
parameters, interference parameters, and cross terms). Therefore, we choose the Wigner-
Hough method as the most appropriate estimation technique for this particular scenario. 6

Example 1
In our first example, we use the same FMCW signal as described in the previous section.
We simulate the desired LPI signal to have an SNR value of -10 dB, while the interfer-
ence source has an Interference-to-Noise-Ratio (INR) of -5 dB. The interference signal is
simulated to be a FMCW signal with α i = 40 MHz and βi = 12 GHz/ms. The number
of samples used is 1024. The Wigner-Hough spectrum is displayed in Figure 14, where
we can see the two different peaks indicating the successful separation of the desired and
interference signals.

The relative errors in estimating αs and βs are computed for 100 simulation runs and are
6 Note that as a direction for future work, we will examine the use of a hybrid method combining both

cross-correlation methods and the Wigner-Hough transform for better estimation of the desired LPI signal
parameters in the presence of strong interference sources.

29
 Figure 14: Wigner-Hough spectrum, signal plus interference

listed in Table 12.

Relative Error in αs 0.0222

Relative Error in βs 0.0279

Table 12: Wigner-Hough, 100 Simulation Runs, SNR -10 dB, INR -5 dB

Example 2
In this example, we examine the performance of the Wigner-Hough method when the in-
terference signal is more powerful. We use the same signal and interference parameters as
described in Example 1 but change the INR value to 10 dB. The Wigner-Hough spectrum
for this case is displayed in Figure 15, where we can see that the method fails to iden-
tify the desired weak LPI signal. This observation motivates the implementation of other
techniques to deal with this scenario and is a point for future investigation.

30
 Figure 15: Wigner-Hough spectrum, strong interference signal

7 Summary and Conclusions

In this project, we studied the problem of detection and characterization of LPI radar sig-
nals by the intercept receivers. Different techniques have been proposed for this task. In
particular, we studied the application of time-frequency tools such as the cross Wigner-
Ville distribution and the Wigner-Hough transform to this scenario. We pointed out that
the Wigner-Hough method outperforms the cross Wigner-Ville method at low SNR val-
ues at the expense of increased processing times. We have also observed that the per-
formance of the Wigner-Hough method can be enhanced by increasing the number of
sampling points used. However, the computational complexity in this case will be pro-
hibitively high an practical implementations are not possible with currently available tech-
nology. We also studied the use of cross-correlation methods for the detection task. We
suggest two alternatives; the first one is to employ two spatially separated receivers and
compute the cross-correlation between their outputs, and the second one is to use a single
receiver and generate a delayed copy of the received signal to compute the cross-correlation
value. Cross-correlation methods require a threshold value, and if the strength of the cross-
correlation exceeds this value the method will declare the presence of a radar signal. We
used a probabilistic approach to compute this threshold based on previous observations.

31
A histogram of the cross-correlation value of noise-only observations is constructed and a
CDF is computed. From the CDF plot, we can determine the threshold value to satisfy a
given false-alarm rate. We pointed out that cross-correlation methods enjoy fast process-
ing time, which increases only linearly with number of samples. Hence, we can further
increase the accuracy of these methods by increasing the number of samples used without
sacrificing the advantage of real time processing. Furthermore, hardware realizations of
these methods can be easily implemented.

The detection performance of both time-frequency and cross-correlation techniques has

been evaluated using different numerical examples. We concluded that the use of cross-
correlation methods is more favorable in terms of accuracy and processing times as com-
pared to time-frequency methods.

Estimation of signal parameters has also been studied. It has been shown that time-
frequency methods can be applied to both FMCW and bi-phase signals to estimate the
modulation parameters. On the other hand, cross-correlation methods can efficiently esti-
mate the modulation parameters of FMCW signals but they may suffer from an ambiguity
problem in estimating these parameters for bi-phase signals. We have developed a criterion
for the choice of the number of delay samples that eliminates this ambiguity problem and
guarantees good estimation performance. The estimation performance of both methods has
been evaluated using different numerical examples.

Finally, we studied the problem of estimating the modulation parameters of the desired
LPI signals when a stronger interference signal is present. We pointed out that the Wigner-
Hough method is the only method that is directly applicable to this scenario. We examined
the performance of this method and highlighted its limited resolution capabilities at high
INR values.

32
References
[1] S. Barbarossa and A. Zanalda, “A combined Wigner-Ville and Hough transform for
cross-terms suppression and optimal detection and parameter estimation,”
ICASSP’92, vol. 5, CA, Mar. 1992, pp. 173-176.
[2] S. Barbarossa, “Analysis of multicomponent LFM signals by a combined
Wigner-Hough transform,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 43, no. 6, pp.
1511-1515, Jun. 1995.
[3] E. J. Carlson, “Low probability of intercept (LPI) techniques and implementations
for radar systems,” IEEE National Radar Conference, MI, Apr. 1988, pp. 56-60.
[4] M. N. Cohen, “Principles of modern radar,”, J. L. Eaves and E. K. Reedy (Eds.), Van
Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1987.
[5] M. N. Cohen, J. M. Baden and P. E. Cohen, “Biphase codes with minimum peak
sidelobes,” IEEE National Radar Conference, TX, Mar. 1989, pp. 62-66
[6] C. De Luigi and E. Moreau, “Wigner-Ville and polynomial Wigner-Ville transforms
in the estimation of nonlinear FM signal parameters,” ICASSP’02, vol. 2, FL, May
2002, pp. 1433-1436.
[7] K. L. Fuller, “To see and not be seen,” IEE Proc. F Radar, Sonar, and Navigation
Signal Processing, vol. 137, no. 1, pp. 1-10, Feb. 1990.
[8] J. E. Gonzalez, J. M. Pardo, A. Asensio, and M. Burgos, “Digital signal generation
for LFM-LPI radars,” Electronic Letters, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 464-465, Mar. 2003.
[9] C. Guanghua, M. Shiwei, Q. Tinghao, W. Jian, and C. Jialin, “The Wigner-Ville
Distribution and the Cross Wigner-Ville Distribution of Noisy Signals,” The 8th
International Conference on Signal Processing, vol. 1, China, Nov. 2006, pp. 16-20.
[10] L. I. Ruffe and G. F. Stott, “LPI considerations for surveillance radars,” IEEE
International Radar Conference, Brighton, United Kingdom, Oct. 1992, pp.
200-202.
[11] B. Boashash and P. O’Shea, “Use of the cross Wigner-Ville distribution for
estimation of instantaneous frequency,” IEEE Trans. Signal Processing, vol. 41, no.
3, pp. 1439-1445, Mar. 1993.
[12] G. Schrick and R. G. Wiley, “Interception of LPI radar signals,” IEEE International
Radar Conference, VA, May 1990, pp. 108-111.
[13] K. R. Veerabhadra Rao and V. R. Umapathi, “Biphase Sequence Generation with
Low Sidelobe Autocorrelation Function,” IEEE Trans. Aerospace and Electronic
Systems, vol. AES-22, no., pp. 128-133, Mar. 1986.

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Detection of low probability of intercept radar signals

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Modern radar systems employ new type of signals, which are more difficult to detect and
exploit. These signals are known as Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) signals. In this
project, we study the performance of the intercept receiver in the scenario of LPI signals.
We propose different techniques to detect and characterize the intercepted signals. We
study the application of time-frequency techniques to this problem. Namely, we apply the
Wigner-Ville distribution method to construct the time-frequency spectrum of the received
signal and detect the presence of a radar signal. We apply the Hough transform, as a line
detector, to the Wigner-Ville spectrum to enhance the performance of signal detection and
estimation. We also propose the use of a novel technique for the detection/estimation of
the intercepted radar signals. This technique is based on cross-correlation properties, and is
shown to enjoy very fast processing time together with very accurate detection/estimation
performance.

Various numerical examples are included to evaluate the performance of these proposed
methods under different scenarios.

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Low Probability of Intercept (LPI) signals, Wigner-Ville distribution, cross-correlation