GENERALISED MONOPULSE ESTIMATION AND ITS PERFORMANCE

ulnch Nickel

FGAN-FHR, 53343 Wachtherg, Germany, e-mail nichel‘2kan de

ABSTRACT maximising the function F ( K ) = loglwH(K)zr instead

Monopulse is an established technique for phased array of (1). Taylor expansion at the position of the maximum
radars for fast and accurate angle estimation. The term gives F (KO) = F (.,,)+Fr, (.-)(KO -%),
monopulse stems &om the fact that historically the where F., F, , denote the vector/ matrix of fmsd second
estimate was based on a single data snapshot. This is not
essential for the method, hut we keep the term for derivatives. As is the position of the maximum the
tradition. In this paper we generalise the monopulse fmt derivative vanishes and the expression is equivalent
technique as a method to determine the maximum of the to the update formula
output power of linearly filtered data, where the filter
weighting depends non-linearly on a set of unknown
K, = K~ - F;’ (K,, ) F. (K, ) . (2)
parameters. This optimum parameters are sought from a F,can he identified as the ratio of the measured
measurement of the filter output and its derivative at
parameter values close to the desired optimum. This ) z Y D ( ~ Ow) ~= ( K ~ ) z ,
quantities Y ( K ~ ) = w ~ ( K ~and
principle is extended to linearly filtered data sampled in the so called monopulse ratio, Ill,
time and space to estimate an arbitrary number of non-
h e a r parameters. In particular we consider the frequently
appearing case of pre-processing (partial pre-filtering). An
application of special interest is filtering with weights
determined adaptively in space and time (STAP). Finally The attractive feature of this estimator is that the signal
we determine the distribution of the estimated parameters amplitude approximately cancels in the quotient. The
under Gaussian assumptions. matrix of second derivatives is approximated by a fixed
matrix related to system parameters, [l]. r-
v
1. THE MONOPULSE PRINCIPLE
2. GENERALISATIONS
Many signal processing tasks include a parameter
estimation problem of the “beamforming” type 2.1. Partial pre-processing

K- = argmaxIWH(K)Z12. (1) Often we have a partial pre-processing, i.e. the data of

length N is pre-summed into a reduced number of L
w E CN is a filter vector which depends non-lmearly on a channels described by i = T;z (preprocessed
number of unknown real parameters K = ( K , ,...,I;P) and quantities in CL are denoted by the tilde). Typically the
pre-processing is performed hy analogue hardware. The
z e@”’ is a data vector (“snapshot”). Often the
full linear filtering process is distributed over pre-
maximisation of the log-Likelihood function leads to such summation (contained in the transformation matrix To)
a problem. The interest is to find a simple formula for the
and a fmal summation w . The distribution of the
argument of the maximum based on few measurements of
summation may also include different scalings, often
the system output Y = w”(K)z. There are two basic determined by hardware issues. [2]. For array antennas
approaches: (a) to determine the maximum kom (few) this pre-processing is the summation of the antenna
measured values for different K (scanning the pattem), element outputs into subarrays as shown in Figure 1.
(h) determine the maximum from measurement at a single
value K,, and some derivatives (the monopulse approach).
For the latter, one extrapolates the position of the
maximum using a Taylor expansion of the function (1). If
we assume the measured data of the type “desired signal
plus noise” the quality of such an expansion will depend
strongly on the power of the desired signal. The advantage
of the monopulse estimate is that an approximately signal
power independent extrapolation scheme is obtained. This
is achieved by compressing the dynamic range by Figure 1: Subarrays and beamforming

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 The subarrays may also incorporate a reduced number of Kronecker products, we have
time delays for broadband beamfonning. The problem of
this analogue pre-processing is that we can apply different
weightings wKonly at the subarray outputs where we are
digital, i.e. we cannot apply the correct derivatives.
This means that we can use the notation of snapshot
Therefore we replace the monopulse formula (2) by an
vectors as before by defming a subarray forming matrix
estimator of the same structure, [2],
T,,, with different subamay sues in space and time by
li = Kg -CO(r -Po), (4) T,, =T, @T, and m,r = m , @ m , . (7)
where ~ = ~ R ~ ( Y , ( K ~ ) / Y ( may
K ~ ) }use arhitraq Note that the pre-summations (subanays) may be
disjoint or overlapping, or may contain isolated samples
) w.",
weightings Y ( K ~ = ( ~ ~ (in
) iarray terminology the
(e.g. generalised sidelobe canceller configurations).
'Sum beam') and Thus this formulation includes a variety of pre-
Y D ( ~ o ) = ( d(K~)Z,,..,
: dr ( K ~ ) ZE@+'
~ ('difference processing or data reduction schemes and for all these
the monopulse formula (4) with (3, (6) can be applied.
beams'). Often these weight vectors are determined
adaptively data dependent. The correction values CO, 2.3. Incoherently averaged monopulse
are then determined such that the monopulse characteristic
M(K)= E { K - K ~ } approximates a h e a r function with Often an averaged filter output
M ( K ~=)0 and with slope 1 or 0 in parameter and cross- $1~"
k=l
( K ) z * ~= W . ( K ) Z Z ~ W ( K )is considered. We
parameter direction, i.e. M x ( ~ ,=) I . These correction
can again apply the same monopulse procedure and this
values can be determined if we h o w the response of the leads to the so called Maximum-Likelihood monopulse
system to the desired signal s for the considered parameter estimator [SI, [6], which uses instead of (3) the
K~ and its derivative, [2], i.e. if we h o w So = T:s(K,), monopulse ratio
and S o , =T:(&/L?K~)(K,,). As derived in [2] the
correction values can be approximated by

Again we can apply the preprocessing technique and

space-time sampling to this type of estimate, too. If the
data are independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) the
correction tams (S), (6) remain the same.

2.4. Generalised beamforming

In some cases one has a filtering matrix or a filter bank
instead of a single filter vector, i.e. the objective
function is of the form I<(K)I* = t r { R ( ~ ) Z z ~By
).
decomposing the beamforming matrix into
for i,h=l..p. R ( K )= L ( K ) L(~K ) this form can be transformed into
a form as in 2.3 I ~ ( K ) I ' = ~ T { L ~ ( K ) Z Z " L (i.e.
K)},
2.2. Generalisation to data sampled in space
N K
and time (coherent processing)
I~(K)[~=CCI.H(K)Z~Z~I,(K),
and we obtain a
In many applications we have data sampled in time and b,

space, written as a data matrix Z=(z,, z2,... ) or as a monopulse ratio similar to (8). However, in this case the
correction terms as in (9,(6) must be written as the sum
snapshot vector zs, =vec(Z} A(zr,zi,... )T. We may over the different weight vectors (as quadratic forms in
have a spatial pre-summation. described by T, and a final numerator and denominator). The functional form of the
summation m, and a time pre-summation denoted by T, decomposed filter vectors (and the derivatives) may be
and fmal time summation m,. The whole space-time complicated if the decomposition is of Choleski type,
summation with the data matrix Z is but they can be simple for a projection beamforming
:, q, =(mrT,")Z(T,m,), where we have dropped the matrix of the type A(AHA)'AH with A having low
dependence on the parameter K ~ Using
. the rules for rank.

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 3. PERFORMANCE MEASURE OF MONOPULSE
ESTIMATES
The standard performance measure for this parameter
estimation problem is the Cramk-Rao (CR) bound. The
CR-bound for this problem has been given in [3] and [4].
However, the CR-bound does not give information about
the bias and is valid only asymptotically.
The distribution of the monopulse ratio has been
determined under the assumption of Gaussian data in [5],
[6] and has been extended in [7], [SI. However, these
papers consider only single parameter estimation. The
results could be applied to multiple parameters if the
difference beams are uncorrelated, which is not the case in
reality. In [9] the distributions for correlated difference
beams were given. For filter vectors determined
adaptively fiom the data the distributions have to be
considered as conditioned on the filter vectors. This is a
reasonable assumption because the type of fluctuation of
the weights depends heavily on the used algorithm (e.g.
diagonally loaded SMI, subspace methods, constrained
methods) for which the distribution can hardly be
calculated. For the monopulse estimate of the type (4), (8)
the mean and the covariance is given by, [9],
E{K) = K g -CO (E{'} - P o )
cov {k} =COcov {r) Ci. (9)
The mean and the covariance of r has been determined in
[9] under the assumption that all filter outputs (Yi,Y) are
complex normal distributed with mean t and covariance
Q for given filter weights w, D=(d,, d2,...) and
conditioned on the output power of Y exceeding a
threshold q. Let t, R be partitioned according to the sum
and difference output t =
then one obtains
I;[ and .=[:; 7)'
- For deterministic signals
-For Rayleigh fluctuating (Gaussian) signals
cov{r(lSr >q}=0.5.E,(q/R,)eR'"V (11)
ThematrixVisgivenby V=Re(R,-R,R;'R~,,}/R,.
PD = Prob{lYI* 2 q } is the detection probability, and A,,
A,. are constants which depend only on the output signal-
to-noise ratio. The explicit formulas for calculating the
constants A,, A, and Po are given in [9]. E, is the
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exponential integral, E,(x) = r e - ' / t dt . The threshold
q excludes too small values in the denominator of the
monopulse ratio and mainly controls the magnitude of c
the variance. For ?j=O we obtain the well known result
that the variance is infmite, the corresponding
distribution is a multi-dimensional Student's t-
distribution, [5], [9]. The variance decreases
monotonically with increasing q. For array antennas a
reasonable value of q is a level above 3 dB SNR, good
estimates are obtained at an SNR above 13 dB.At these
values P p 1 andA,=O.
The derivation of these distributions requires i.i.d.
filter outputs, [9]. The results are therefore not valid for
the generalisation of Sect.2.4, where we have a sum
over different Gaussian variables.
4. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
For demonstration purposes we give an example of
broadband duection fmdmg with a space-time adaptive
array suppressing a jammer. We use a realistic planar
array configuration with 902 elements on a !xiangular
grid pre-summed into 32 subarrays, for Fig. 2 and 3 of a
chequerboard and dartboard type, respectively. The look
duection for pre-summation is -43", the relative
bandwidth is 10%. Bandwidth dispersion effects are
compensated by adaptation in time for 3 delay taps at
B d . 5 . This means that we use 3x32 adaptive weights.
An element taper for low sidelobes is applied (-40 dB
Taylor weighting). <:
The following figures show bias and standard 2
.
deviation for different directions for stochastic
(Rayleigh) signals calculated with the formulas (4), (9,
(6), (7), (9), (11). The true signal position is where the
arrows start, the endpoints mark the bias. The jammer
position is close to the main beam and is indicated by
0.06 . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
:..
1
0.M I
Figure 2: Bias and standard deviation
with 32 chequerboard subarrays, 3 taps

Figure 3: Monopulse bias and std
with 32 dartboard subamys, 3 taps
. . . .
o,02 ...........
..................
, 0; . . . . . . . .
-
-
-, ..............
-0.02 -. . . . . . . . . .
. . . Results and Comparisons”, IEEE Trans. ASSP 38
. . . .
Figure 4: Monopulse bias and std with 32
dartboard subamays, 3 taps, broadband
beamforming with time delays at subarrays.
the asterisk (jammer-to-noise ratio JNR=34dB,
SNR=OdB). The 3dB contour of the maiddifference beam
is shown by dashed/ solid lines, respectively. The
chequerboard subarray configuration approximates better
the true derivative at the elements and gives hence smaller
errors. However, the adaptive jammer suppression does
produce grating notches due to the regular subarray
structure which is less present in the dartboard
configuration. Figure 4 shows the improvement that can
be obtained with the dartboard subarrays if true time
delays are used for beamforming at the subarray outputs
- instead of phase shifting only at the elements. Bias and
variance depend also on the location of the jammer which
is adaptively suppressed The bias is always zero in the
look direction K ~ where
, the Taylor expansion is applied.
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The CR inequality would give in these cases no
information about the bias, and would give variances
which coincide with the ones presented here only for an
S N R above 23dB.
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
We have described the general monopulse procedure
which is useful for parameter estimation from
coherently/ incoherently averaged linear filter outputs
with partial pre-processing. For the estimated
parameters we have given the exact distribution under
Gaussian assumptions. These distributions provide in
particular information at low S N R and information
about the bias which is not given by the Cram&-Rao
bound. The distributions are very useful to assess the
efficiency of different preprocessing schemes.
The monopulse procedure can be applied iteratively
(at the preprocessing/ subanay level) to further reduce
the bias. This has been termed ‘multi-step monopulse‘
and found very effective, [I]. In fact, this is an
approximation of a Newton-type iteration.
6. REFERENCES
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U. Nickel, “Monopulse estimation with subarray-
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..............
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141 A. Dogandzif, A. Nehorai, “Cramer-Rao Bounds
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I. Kanta, “Multiple Gaussian Targets: The
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A.D. Seifer, ”Monopulse-Radar Angle Tracking
in Noise or Noise Jamming”, IEEE Trans. AES
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W.D. Blair, M. Brandt-Pearce, “Statistical
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