Abstract: The position for the centroid at the target is important precession and mass distribution characteristics of a ballistic target in midcourse, and can be used to discriminate between warheads and decoys. A centroid position estimation method is proposed based on the phase signature of the narrow-band radar echo for the rotationally symmetric target. An arbitrary point at the target axis of symmetry is selected as the reference point for the centroid position. The corresponding centroid position parameter is defined, and the all-attitude scattering coefficient template is constructed with the point as the phase reference center. The phase matching transform is performed on the sample series of the narrow-band radar echo, and the centroid position parameter is estimated by searching for the maximum value of the matching function. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Key words: motion estimation, parameter estimation, phase matching, missiles, radar target recognition