Targets’ Radial and Tangential Velocities Estimation Based on Vortex Electromagnetic Waves

The orbital angular momentum (OAM) of a vortex electromagnetic wave (VEW) has gained attention as a newly explored information carrier. OAM modes provide vortex azimuth resolution, which is a new degree of freedom (DOF) in radar application. Due to the special characteristics of the vortex azimuth domain, VEW shares compound Doppler information of two-dimensional (2D) speed. This paper proposes a 2D target velocity estimation method for VEW radar. The Doppler effect of VEW is first analyzed. Based on the relativity of tangential speed and OAM mode, a pulse-by-pulse OAM mode-changing strategy is designed. Then, a modified Radon–Fourier transformation (RFT) is proposed to estimate the compound Doppler frequency while range migration is compensated. In addition, decoupling and ambiguity-solving procedures are applied to the compound Doppler frequency estimation to obtain tangential and radial speed estimations separately. According to the simulation analyses, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified.