Theoretical and practical limits of high-resolution analysis methods

An effort is made to justify the concept of high-resolution spectral analysis as applied to radar signal processing, and to estimate the theoretical and practical performance. The error of frequency estimation is derived from the Cramer Rao lower bound, and the signal that must be emitted to minimize this error is specified. Based on this error, an intuitive criterion is proposed which characterizes the resolution and makes it possible to evaluate the influence of different parameters (phase difference, SNR, and the number of targets). These results are compared with those obtained by the Burg and forward and backward linear predictor methods. Finally, the calculations are extended to simultaneous angle-Doppler analysis for a phased array.