Active CLEAN: A modified CLEAN algorithm for HRRPs of contiguous targets with thinned spectrum

High range resolution profiles (HRRPs) of contiguous targets often suffer from sidelobe artifacts. Deconvolution algorithms, such as coherent CLEAN, do not perform well in these scenarios because of spurious peaks and peak mislocations. The problem is more serious when only a portion of the frequency spectrum is used for generating the range profile (i.e., 1-D imaging with thinned spectrum) because of high sidelobes. We propose a modification to the coherent CLEAN technique in which we use a point spread function (PSF) best suited for 1-D imaging. Upper bounds on the average location error have been derived for the proposed technique and extensive simulations have been carried out to corroborate the theory. The proposed technique has been found to work well even in low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scenarios.