6582 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO.

24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

Sparse Discrete Fractional Fourier Transform and

Its Applications
Shengheng Liu, Student Member, IEEE, Tao Shan, Ran Tao, Senior Member, IEEE,
Yimin D. Zhang, Senior Member, IEEE, Guo Zhang, Feng Zhang, Member, IEEE, and Yue Wang

Abstract—The discrete fractional Fourier transform is a pow- results of the linear combination type do not match those of
erful signal processing tool with broad applications for nonsta- the continuous fractional Fourier transform (FrFT). In contrast,
tionary signals. In this paper, we propose a sparse discrete frac- the sampling based approach has a closed form expression
tional Fourier transform (SDFrFT) algorithm to reduce the com-
putational complexity when dealing with large data sets that are
with a relatively low complexity of , and the
sparsely represented in the fractional Fourier domain. The pro- transformed results approach that of the continuous FrFT [9].
posed technique achieves multicomponent resolution in addition Therefore, the sampling based DFrFT is widely employed in
to its low computational complexity and robustness against noise. engineering applications.
In addition, we apply the SDFrFT to the synchronization of high Among the various types of DFrFT algorithms, the lowest
dynamic direct-sequence spread-spectrum signals. Furthermore,
complexity is achieved by the Pei’s algorithm [9]. The Pei’s al-
a sparse fractional cross ambiguity function (SFrCAF) is devel-
oped, and the application of SFrCAF to a passive coherent loca- gorithm can be further optimized via a novel sub-linear algo-
tion system is presented. The experiment results confirm that the rithm for DFT named sparse Fourier transform (SFT) developed
proposed approach can substantially reduce the computation com- by Haitham et al. [10], [11]. When the input data have a large
plexity without degrading the precision. size with a sparse spectrum, this algorithm reduces the com-
Index Terms—Cross ambiguity function, global positioning plexity of DFT to , where stands for
system, passive bistatic radar, sparse discrete fractional Fourier the number of large coefficients in the frequency domain. Con-
transform. sider a wideband chirp signal with a sparse feature in the frac-
tional Fourier domain, to accelerate the time-frequency anal-
I. INTRODUCTION ysis of such signals, we propose an efficient scheme through
redesigning Pei’s algorithm by exploiting the advantage of the

T HE discrete fractional Fourier transform (DFrFT) is a gen-

eralization of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) with
an additional free order parameter [1], which requires a much
SFT framework.
In addition to the SFT algorithm, pruning [12] is also a
frequently referred approach to implement DFT by exploiting
higher computational complexity than the DFT. Similar to the signal sparsity. Unlike SFT, however, the sparsity pattern of
fast Fourier transform (FFT) [2] that promoted the applications the signal has to be known in advance when using pruning.
of DFT, an efficient computation method is also needed to facil- Another difference between the two algorithms is that the SFT
itate the applications of DFrFT. is a probabilistic algorithm while the pruning FFT algorithm is
A number of definitions and fast computational algorithms deterministic.
of DFrFT have been derived in recent years. Among them, the In our previous related works, we investigated the spectral
most common types include the eigenvector decomposition analysis and reconstruction in the fractional Fourier domain
type [3]–[5], the linear combination type [6] and the sampling [13], the fractional power spectrum [14], the sampling theo-
type [7]–[9]. However, the eigenvector decomposition based rems in the fractional Fourier domain [15], [16], time delay
approach cannot be expressed in a closed form, and the run- estimation of chirp signals in the fractional Fourier domain
time is for an -point data set, while the transformed [17], and the short-time FrFT [18]. On this basis, we propose
the sparse discrete fractional Fourier transform (SDFrFT) to
achieve fast computation of DFrFT in this paper.
Manuscript received June 06, 2014; revised August 22, 2014; accepted Oc-
Many challenging engineering applications can be formu-
tober 08, 2014. Date of publication October 31, 2014; date of current version
November 14, 2014. The associate editor coordinating the review of this man- lated as large-scale signal analysis problems in the fractional
uscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Antonio Napolitano. This Fourier domain. Therefore, the proposed algorithm can benefit
research was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
the applications in spectrum sensing, radio astronomy, radar
of China under Grant No. 61421001, 61331021, 61172176 and 61201354.
(Corresponding authors: T. Shan and R. Tao.) signal processing, digital medical imaging, communication,
S. Liu, T. Shan, R. Tao, G. Zhang, F. Zhang, and Y. Wang are with the School cryptography and compression [19], [20]. Due to the limited
of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology and the Bei-
space, we only select two applications in this paper to illustrate
jing Key Laboratory of Fractional Signals and Systems, Beijing 100081, China
(e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm: acquisition of high
Y. D. Zhang is with the Center for Advanced Communications, Villanova dynamic direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DSSS) signals used
University, Villanova, PA 19085 USA.
in the global positioning system (GPS) and coherent integration
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. of accelerating targets in passive coherent location (PCL)
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TSP.2014.2366719 systems.

1053-587X © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6583

The contribution of this paper is fivefold: (1) We propose the [21]. Define a flat window function , which is
concept and algorithm of SDFrFT; (2) We analyze its impor- a symmetric vector, . Let denote the
tant properties such as the capability of resolving multiple signal window length in the time domain. Suppose that
components; (3) We apply the SDFrFT to the fast synchroniza- is the frequency domain expression of ,
tion of high dynamic GPS signals; (4) We develop sparse frac- whose range obeys
tional cross ambiguity function (SFrCAF) to reduce the compu-
,
tational complexity of radar signal processing; (5) We apply the (5)
,
proposed SFrCAF to a PCL system to yield desirable results.
The rest of the paper is arranged as follows. In Section II, the where and are the truncation factors of the pass-
proposed SDFrFT algorithm is presented, and its relationship band and stopband, respectively, and denotes the
with the Pei’s algorithm and the SFT is discussed. Simulation extent of ripple oscillation. Define a signal
results and performance analysis of the proposed algorithm are , , then the support of sat-
given in Section III. In Section IV, we apply the SFrCAF to the isfies .
fast acquisition of high dynamic DSSS signals. In Section V, Step 4) Let be an exact divisor of integer . If ,
the principle of the proposed SFrCAF and its application to the construct a signal
PCL signal processing is demonstrated. The paper is concluded
in Section VI.

II. METHODOLOGY
(6)
A. SDFrFT Algorithm
1) Algorithm Flow: From a practice perspective, the compu- On the other hand, if , substitute the FFT
tational efficiency of an algorithm is a critical factor. The main operation with IFFT. Assume that is the fre-
steps of the proposed SDFrFT algorithm are as follows: quency domain expression of signal . It can be
Step 1) Construct the input signal of the SFT stage from the proved that [10], [29]
original input signal by a chirp multiplication.
Note that must be sparse in fractional Fourier (7)
domain and nonperiodic, and satisfy the Dirichlet
condition. (7) indicates that aliasing in the time domain cor-
responds to subsampling in the frequency domain.
(1) Store the value of and parameter employed
in (2).
where is the sampling interval of the input signal, Step 5) Define a hash function
is a real number representing the rotation angle of
FrFT. (8)
Step 2) To tear apart the nearby coefficients in the spectrum,
and an offset function
a permutation is adopted to reorder the signal’s fre-
quency domain . This process is conducted by (9)
modifying the time-domain signal as we do not
have access to the input signal’s Fourier spectrum, Step 6) Location loops: Define another set
which would require performing a DFT [21]. We
(10)
permutate the constructed signal as follows:

(2) where contains the coordinates of the max-

imum magnitudes in . Output the preimage
where is a random odd number that is
invertible mod , and mod denotes the modulo op- (11)
eration that finds the remainder of division of one
The size of is 2 .
number by another: Given two positive numbers
Step 7) Estimation loops: We can estimate the largest co-
and , yields the remainder of the Eu-
efficients of as follows:
clidean division of by . Assume that
,
(3) (12)

so that the relation between the frequency domain

Let be the number of loops, and be two
representations of and is [10]
positive integers, and . For ,
(4) execute the steps between Step 2–Step 6. For
, execute the steps between Step 2–Step 7.
Step 3) To extract parts of a signal in a smooth way and The process is terminated when . It can be
avoid spectral leakage, a window function is used seen that the location loops are actually executed for

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6584 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

but it appears incapable of analyzing multicomponent signals.

As a computationally efficient alternative to the MLE method,
the DPT with order 2 converts the chirp signal into a sinusoidal
wave [23]. In this way, the rotation angles of the multicompo-
nent signals can be quickly determined.
In our work, we adopt the DPT-based approach to estimate
the rotation angle . Let be a complex-valued function of a
real discrete variable , and be a positive integer representing
delay parameter. The operators and
are defined as

(15)
(16)

where denotes conjugate operation. We also introduce an oper-

ator , which is the DFT of . Note that performs
phase differencing, and it can be proved that differencing re-
Fig. 1. Architecture for SDFrFT algorithm when . duces the order of the polynomial by one.
Consider a signal , where
represents the sampling interval, and is the chirp rate. We get
times, and the estimation loops are executed
for times.
Step 8) The estimated output of can be obtained by
selecting the median values of the real and the imag-
inary parts separately:
(17)

(13)
Step 9) By multiplying another chirp function to the estima- According to (17), the energy of
tion result obtained from the above steps, the will concentrate at
output of the SDFrFT algorithm is finally given by
(18)

(14) and it is proved that the best estimation precision can be ob-
where is the sampling interval of the output tained with . Then, can be correctly estimated from .
signal, and is the length of the DFrFT output. However, influenced by the input channel noise, the estima-
The detailed overall computation architecture for tion precision may not be sufficient for some application sce-
the situation is presented in Fig. 1. narios. For these cases, a fine search for the value of within
2) Selection of : With regard to the selection of the value a limited range around the estimated result is required. In the
of , there are two cases in practice: process, the selection of the step size mainly depends on
Case 1) The value of is already known. This kind of situ- the chirp rate resolution and application requirement. Here we
ation exists in many applications, for example, the derive the upper bound of under the constraint of chirp rate
matched filtering in the linear frequency modula- resolution . From (18) we know that
tion radar or in the synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
imaging. (19)
Case 2) The value of is unknown. For this case, we estimate
the value of by the discrete polynomial-phase
transform (DPT) method [22], [23]. The estimation Let be the time length of the signal, and choose . Then
precision can be further improved by searching with we can get
a finer step size within a limited range around the es-
timated value of . (20)
We explain how to choose the value of as follows.
An important method to estimate the rotation angle is the Comparing (1) with (17), we can find that
maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) technique [24]. In [25],
the discrete chirp Fourier transform, which is the discrete form
of the MLE, is proposed to estimate the chirp rate. However, due
to the exhausting two-dimensional maximization process of the
(21)
MLE, suboptimal methods are preferred. The phase unwrapping
method [26] is developed based on the finite difference operator, where denotes first-order derivative operator.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6585

B. Relation to the Pei’s Sampling-Type Algorithm and the then locate and estimate the large coefficients in a manner sim-
Concept of SFT ilar to the sketching/streaming algorithms, where either iteration
The continuous FrFT [27] is defined as (22), at the bottom or interpolation, the expensive process in the previous methods,
of the page, where denotes the fractional Fourier domain is needed. This makes it possible for further improvement of the
frequency, is an integer, , and the phase of algorithm efficiency on the basis of the Pei’s sampling-type al-
is constrained in the range of . gorithm. Fortunately, it happens that the algorithm architecture
The Pei’s sampling-type algorithm [9] is derived based on of the Pei’s algorithm is suited for this kind of modification.
(22). First, the input and the output signals are directly sampled The revised Pei’s algorithm, termed SDFrFT, is designed for
by the intervals and , respectively. Second, to satisfy the the signals that meet the following descriptions: The signal is
reversible property, the sampling interval is restricted by non-stationary with a large scale, and is -sparse in the frac-
tional Fourier domain, where the signal size and the number
of large coefficients satisfy . This kind of signal is
(23) common in many applications, such as SAR signal processing
and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging.
Denote the length of input signal by . Then, the constraint
must be satisfied. We only discuss the situ-
ation in this paper. In this case, the form of DFrFT can be ob- III. PERFORMANCE OF PROPOSED SDFRFT
tained as shown in (24) at the bottom of the page.
Generally, if , the Pei’s sampling-type algorithm can A. Resolution Performance
be seen as two times of multiplication with chirp signals and one In the following an example is given to illustrate the resolu-
time of FFT. Therefore, the overall multiplication complexity of tion performance of the proposed SDFrFT in the multi-rotation
the Pei’s algorithm is . angle case. The initial frequencies of the four frequency com-
As the most efficient numerical algorithm of DFrFT, the Pei’s ponents are 100, 200, 300 and 300.1 Hz, respectively, and the
sampling-type algorithm is suited for a broad spectrum of ap- chirp rates of these components are 10, 11.85, 13.85 and 13.85
plications. However, the computational complexity will be high Hz/s, respectively. The sampling rate is , and the
when the data length is large, in which the FFT stage ac- data length is . The input signal is corrupted by a white
counts for a major proportion. When the signal is sparse, i.e., Gaussian noise, and the SNRs of the four frequency components
most of its coefficients are zero or negligible, it is recently re- are 12, 18, 24 and 24 dB, respectively. In the simulation
vealed that the computational complexity of DFT can be signifi- process, the number of computed large coefficients in the fre-
cantly reduced by a novel fast algorithm named SFT [10], which quency domain is set to . The loop number parameters
is far superior to the FFT. The key idea of SFT is to first parti- are set as and , respectively. The filter pa-
tion the frequency domain of the sparse signal into individual rameters are set as , , , and
buckets using a specially designed filter that is concentrated . The length of subsampled FFT is . In
both in time and frequency domains, which is obtained by con- every location loop, as many as maximum magnitudes
volving a Dolph-Chebyshev function with a box-car function, are searched out from .

,
(22)
,
,

, (24)

,
.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6586 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

Fig. 2. The resolution performance of SDFrFT: (a) The frequency domain of the input signal. (b) (d) (f) The matched-order DFrFT of the four components
respectively. (c) (e) (g) The matched-order SDFrFT of the four components, respectively.

The simulation results are shown in Fig. 2, where Fig. 2(a) sparse component in the fractional Fourier domain can be
shows the frequency domain magnitude of the input signal, guaranteed by the proposed SDFrFT. On the other hand,
and the rest are arranged in 3 rows and 2 columns. The results in the estimated fractional Fourier domain, the components
in each row are obtained by setting the rotation angle in which do not behave sparse and focused will be estimated
the fractional Fourier domain such that one of the frequency as dense fractional spectral lines with lower amplitude as
components is focused. The simulation results demonstrate compared with the correctly estimated large values. The
that, in this multi-rotation angle case, the estimation precision enlargements in Figs. 2(f) and (g) reveal the local details of
of the fractional frequency and the amplitude value of the the immediately adjacent spectral lines with the same chirp

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6587

Fig. 3. Comparison of the computational complexity between conventional Fig. 4. Robustness vs. SNR.
DFrFT and SDFrFT approaches.

, , and rad. 20000 Monte Carlo trials are con-

rate, indicating that the SDFrFT processing does not affect ducted with different SNRs ranging from 10 dB to 30 dB. For
the resolution performance. each trial, we compute the average value of the estimation error
per large entry between the SDFrFT output and the
B. Computational Complexity best -sparse approximation of the DFrFT output ,
The calculation of the proposed SDFrFT involves a total which can be expressed as
number of
(26)

(25)
Fig. 4 plots the average error of the SDFrFT obtained from
complex multiplication operations, where the function the numeric simulation results, which confirms the robustness
expresses the cardinality of a set. of the algorithm under noisy circumstance.
The comparative result of the computation complexity be-
tween SDFrFT and DFrFT is shown in Fig. 3. Note that the re- IV. APPLICATION TO THE SYNCHRONIZATION OF HIGH
sult is simply based on the number of complex multiplications DYNAMIC DSSS SIGNAL
in the unoptimized algorithm flow as depicted in (25). In the DSSS communication and navigation systems [30] have the
simulation process, we assume the number of computed large advantages of low spectral density, high information security
coefficients in the frequency domain to be . The loop and resistance to jamming, and are easy to realize multiple ac-
number parameters are set as and , respec- cess communications and high-precision measurements. Hence,
tively. It can be seen that, when the data length is increased to they are widely used in both civilian and military applications.
a moderate level, the advantage of the SDFrFT over the DFrFT The well-known GPS [31] is an example of DSSS system. To
in computational complexity becomes more evident. ensure correct despreading and demodulation, signal synchro-
The proposed SDFrFT algorithm is designed based on the nization is needed at the receiver end. The synchronization in
SFT theory [10] and code versions 1 and 2 [28]. As is pointed a DSSS system normally consists of two steps: acquisition and
out in [21], the computational complexity of these two versions tracking, where acquisition is the prerequisite for tracking. GPS
closely correlates with the signal size . The version 3 and receivers are now frequently used in the field of aerospace engi-
4 codes are not published yet. However, the theories of these neering. The commonly occurring high dynamic relative motion
two versions have been described in [29], and some analysis between the navigation satellite and the receiver platform will
of version 3 can be found in [21]. It is proved that, in code induce acute variations in the phase of the carrier. The high ve-
version 3, the correlation between signal size and computational locity and acceleration of the motion are characterized as a large
complexity becomes less significant. Thus it is reasonable to Doppler shift and its derivative.
expect that the SDFrFT based on SFT code version 3 will not Conventional FFT based fast acquisition approaches
necessarily require such a large signal size to exceed the classic [32]–[34] solely compensate for the Doppler shift compo-
algorithm. nent caused by the high velocity, whereas the impact of the
On the other hand, our algorithm is already computation- change rate of the Doppler frequency is ignored. However,
ally faster for signals with length around , which is a quite if the change rate of the Doppler frequency is high, then the
common size in many application scenarios. Some of the exam- spectral expansion results in a reduction of the signal peak, and
ples will be presented in Section IV and Section V. thereby, makes the acquisition difficult, especially with an ex-
tremely low SNR. In this section, we propose a fast acquisition
C. Algorithm Robustness method based on the SDFrFT to synchronize high dynamic
As illustrated in [10], the SFT’s reduced runtime does not DSSS signals. By compensating the quadratic phase term with
compromise its robustness to noise. The robustness to noise of SDFrFT, a notably enhanced acquisition performance can be
the proposed algorithm is examined by simulations. Let achieved.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6588 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

Fig. 6. The architecture of the SDFrFT based synchronization algorithm.

Fig. 5. The relationship between integration loss and dynamic strain.

A. Principle
Fig. 7. The relationship between acceleration and transform order.
Let and be the initial velocity and acceleration of the
receiver platform relative to the transmitter respectively. Let adopted to further reduce the computational complexity. When
denote the carrier wavelength, so the Doppler frequency at searching for the Doppler frequency , the input signal
time can be written as is first multiplied by to obtain , where
. As subsampling a signal in the frequency domain
(27)
is equivalent to aliasing it in the time domain, and vice versa,
Thus, the received signal can be expressed as signal is aliased to obtain its subsampled version as

(29)

where is the number of samples. The output is divided into

(28) buckets with samples in each bucket. Then a subsampled
DFrFT of size is performed on the aliased time signal. The
where and represent the modulated data code and
result of DFrFT is multiplied by the conjugate of the FFT of the
spread spectrum code, respectively, and denotes the in-
local code which is of length and downsampled by . By
termediate frequency (IF). It can be seen from (28) that the
performing an inverse sparse Fourier transform (ISFT) to the
relative accelerating motion of the receiver platform will bring
multiplication result, the aliased time domain output is obtained
in a quadratic phase term to the modulated signal, which will
as
directly influence the acquisition performance. Take GPS
receiver for instance. When FFT is adopted to process the (30)
received signal, the impact of acceleration on the signal peak
is shown in Fig. 5, where the wavelength is 0.1904 m, the where denotes the ISFT operation.
sampling rate is 5 MHz, and the integration time is 0.08 s. It To determine the unique solution, we first find the bucket with
can be concluded from Fig. 5 that the amplitude of the signal the maximum magnitude among the buckets; then, we check
peak declines with the increase of the acceleration. The loss of the correlation of each of the possible time shifts which
signal peak is about 4 dB when the acceleration is 10 g, whilst are aliased into this bucket, and ultimately select the shift that
the loss reaches 10 dB when the acceleration is 40 g, where corresponds to the maximum correlation.
represents the gravity acceleration. Let denote the chirp frequency modulation rate,
The fastest GPS synchronization algorithm is presented in where . From (22) and (28) we know that when
[34], where SFT is exploited to reduce the computational com- , the chirp signals will focus in the frac-
plexity. For real GPS signals, the results in [34] show that the tional Fourier domain. That is to say, for high dynamic signals,
new algorithm reduces the median number of multiplications by the transform order is relevant to the acceleration of the receiver
a factor of 2.2 in comparison to the FFT-based synchronization platform. The relationship between acceleration and transform
algorithm. Based on this method, a SDFrFT based synchroniza- order is shown in Fig. 7.
tion algorithm is proposed to deal with the high dynamic situa-
tion as shown in Fig. 6. B. Algorithm Verification
It is emphasized that the synchronization output has a single In this section, the algorithm implementation of high dynamic
major peak at the correct rotation angle and time delay, while the DSSS signal synchronization is conducted on a GPS naviga-
FrFT of the input signal is not sparse. Therefore, in the inverse tion platform, which is illustrated in Fig. 8. We first amplify the
FrFT step, the proposed SDFrFT can be adopted to lower the received satellite signal, and then perform down conversion to
runtime. Since the function of the front FrFT step is to provide the amplified signal, where the adopted IF is 0.42 MHz. After
the input for the inverse FrFT step, and the SDFrFT step needs passing through the A/D converter with the sampling rate of
only few samples of the FrFT output, a subsampled DFrFT is 5 MHz, the digitized signals in the two orthogonal inphase (I)

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6589

V. SFRCAF AND ITS APPLICATION TO PCL

In this section, we consider another application of the SD-
FrFT. The cross ambiguity function (CAF) is a frequently used
mathematical tool in radar signal processing, which is used pri-
marily to determine the range and Doppler resolutions of a target
in a particular waveform. Other important applications of the
CAF embrace estimating the time/frequency difference of ar-
rival at two spatially separated receivers [35] to determine the
emitter location and performing coherent integration in a PCL
Fig. 8. The architecture of the experimental GPS receiver system. system [36]. Here we mainly focus on its application to the PCL
system.
TABLE I Due to the extraordinary merits of low cost, electromagnetic
SIMULATION PARAMETERS compatibility, potential anti-stealth capacity and immunity to
electronic countermeasures [37], the past few years have wit-
nessed a significant growth of interest and extensive research
achievements in the realm of PCL technology. The CAF plays
an important role in PCL to increase the signal-to-interference
plus noise ratio (SINR) to a detectable level. The corresponding
information of targets such as time delay and Doppler shift can
be directly obtained from the CAF map [38].
Generally, long time integration is adopted to improve the
SINR for weak signals, yet it is accompanied by increased
computational complexity. Thus, it is rational that down
sampling and the FFT are used to decrease the computation
burden, and various versions of CAF are commonly based
on this idea [39], [40]. However, in the application scenario
where a high frequency resolution is required, the calculation
complexity for FFT becomes extremely high because FFT
requires multiplications. In most application
situations, nevertheless, only a small number of targets appear
in one range cell. Consequently, the CAF plane is dominated by
a small number of peaks, namely, a sparse feature is presented.
In this case, we propose a novel SFrCAF algorithm based on
the SDFrFT to promote the operation efficiency.

A. Principle
Fig. 9. Simulation results of GPS acquisition using different approaches: In this section, the definition and the derivation of the novel
(a) FFT. (b) DFrFT. (c) SFT. (d) SDFrFT. SFrCAF are discussed in a PCL radar scenario.
A PCL system utilizes the direct wave signal and the target
echo signal to calculate CAF. The CAF is calculated as
and quadrature (Q) channels are conveyed to the acquisition and
tracking module to reconstruct the navigation message. (31)
The following simulation is based on the coarse/acquisition
(C/A) code. The C/A code is a pseudo-random (PN) binary se-
quence, which is transmitted at a rate of 1.023 Mchips/s with where is the echo signal received by the surveillance an-
the information data rate of 50 bps. The PN sequences only tenna, is the direct path signal received by the reference
strongly correlate when they are exactly aligned. We choose the antenna, and denote the time delay and the Doppler shift,
L1 wave band as the carrier frequency, whose center frequency respectively, and is the integration time. It is worth noting
is 1575.42 MHz. that the CAF in (31) can be interpreted as the Fourier transform
The other simulation parameters are listed in Table I. Fig. 9 of the product of the delayed version of and the conjugate
shows the simulation results using FFT, DFrFT, SFT and SD- of .
FrFT. It can be seen that, with the acceleration de-chirped, a The discrete definition of CAF can be written as follows:
more concentrating correlation peak can be obtained by using
FrFT approach than by FFT approach. The SDFrFT method (32)
only outputs the most significant peak, and the algorithm per-
forms well even in a relatively low SNR environment. By re- where and are the sampled echo and reference sig-
ferring to Fig. 3, we draw the conclusion that the proposed nals, respectively. In addition, is the number of delay bins,
method can greatly increase both the probability and the speed is the number of Doppler shift bins, and refers to the in-
of acquisition. tegration length of data. Then, the integration time of CAF is

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6590 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

Substituting (34) into (35) and (36), then performing Taylor se-
ries expansion at with the quadratic and higher terms
neglected, we can get

(37)

Fig. 10. The bistatic geometry of PCL.

. By adopting low-pass filtering and times (38)

down sampling to the product of , we can ob-
tain , where , and the number of integration Therefore, the relationship between the echo signal and the di-
points is . Then, the calculation of (32) can be sim- rect path signal can be written as
plified as
(39)
(33)
where represents the amplitude of the echo signal. Note that
After down sampling, the frequency domain observation range (39) describes an ideal model of the relationship between the
is , where denotes the base- received signals, which is derived from the scenario illustrated
band sampling rate. in Fig. 10 with a single target, which undergoes maneuvering
In practice, when the frequency spectrum of the targets is with a constant acceleration within the integration time. As we
sparse, the FFT can be replaced by the SDFrFT in the calculation pointed out prior to (37) and (38), the quadratic and higher terms
of the CAF to improve the operation efficiency. are neglected. Empirical knowledge and studies in other litera-
When a target with accelerating motion is to be detected, the tures [41], [42] reveal that the simplified model is sufficient for
Doppler migration should be considered. The bistatic configu- theoretical discussion and practical applications.
ration of PCL is illustrated in Fig. 10, where and denote In this case, DFrFT is an effective measure to compensate the
the location of the non-cooperative transmitter and the receiver, Doppler migration so as to improve the SINR. Comparing (31)
respectively. At the initial time, the target is located at O, accel- and (39) with (22), we can see that, to reach the best compensa-
erating with the initial velocity and a constant acceleration tion performance, the rotation angle needs to satisfy
along the straight line which slants at an angle of to the
bistatic angular bisector. The bistatic angular is , and de-
notes the baseline distance. At time , it reaches the location P.
, , and represent the distance between the
target and the transmitter or the receiver at the initial time or at
, respectively. (40)
From Fig. 10, we can obtain the bistatic range as (34), shown
at the bottom of the page. Let c be the velocity of light. The At this point, the time delay, the Doppler frequency and the ac-
bistatic time delay and Doppler frequency can be derived from celeration of a certain target can be estimated by the -order
(35) and (36), respectively, and expressed as FrCAF as
(35)

(36) (41)

(34)

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6591

Fig. 11. Simulation results of coherent integration using different approaches: (a) CAF result with FFT. (b) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section of the CAF
map in (a). (c) SFrCAF result with SFT, namely . (d) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section of the SFrCAF map in (c). (e) SFrCAF result, where Doppler
migration has been compensated at . (f) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section of the SFrCAF map in (e).

For the additional dimension to the conventional CAF, the In the case where a priori information suggests that the target
FrCAF is more time-consuming, and thus greatly limits its remains in its state of radial uniform motion during the integra-
application range. By adopting the proposed SDFrFT based tion time, the SDFrFT process can be further simplified to the
method, a significant reduction in the overall runtime can be SFT.
achieved. Thus, the proposed -order SFrCAF can be expressed
as
B. Algorithm Verification
(42)
The aforementioned algorithm is validated by the following
where denotes the -order SDFrFT operation to simulation and real data experiment, where the digital video
signal . broadcast signal is adopted as the non-cooperative transmitted

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6592 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

Fig. 12. Real data experiment results of coherent integration using different approaches: (a) CAF result of real data. (b) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section
of the CAF map in (a). (c) SFrCAF result with SFT, namely . (d) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section of the SFrCAF map in (c). (e) SFrCAF result of
real data, where . (f) Side view of Doppler-amplitude section of the SFrCAF map in (e).

TABLE II of the same data length, when is rotated to an appropriate

TARGET PARAMETERS OF THE TARGET WITH ACCELERATING MOTION angle, the Doppler migration is compensated, which is shown in
Figs. 11(e) and (f), while the runtime is dramatically decreased.
According to (41), with the optimum rotation angle and the
location of the delay/Doppler bin, we can estimate the bistatic
acceleration, range and velocity of the target.
Note that an obvious range migration can be observed in the
simulation result depicted in Fig. 11(e). However, the Keystone
signal. The bandwidth , the carrier frequency and the base- transform based solution to this problem has been well estab-
band sampling rate are 7.56 MHz, 674 MHz and 9 MHz, lished in our previous work [41]. We do not discuss it here for
respectively. conciseness since it is out of the scope of this paper.
1) Simulation: Detection of Target With Accelerating Mo- 2) Real Offline Data Experiment: In this example, we use a
tion: In the simulation, the other corresponding parameters of real recorded experiment data set to conduct the offline signal
the accelerating target are as listed in Table II. The target uni- processing. The processed results of the CAF and the SFrCAF
formly accelerates along the bistatic angular bisector with the are shown in Fig. 12. The length of the data to be processed is
initial velocity and acceleration . Figs. 11(a) and (b) show 3932160 samples, which is downsampled by a rate of 120 before
the CAF results using FFT, where the Doppler migration is performing coherent integration. In the SFrCAF processing, the
highly conspicuous, thus the energy of the target echo does optimum rotation angle is estimated as . The
not focus in a single frequency bin. By adopting the SFrCAF bistatic Doppler frequency, the time delay, and the variation rate

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6593

location/estimation loops and Doppler filtering at different time

delays, may facilitate its efficient realization on a programmable
graphic processing unit (GPU) via NVidia’s compute unified
device architecture (CUDA) paradigm, thus GPU could be a
preferred selection in practice.

VI. CONCLUSION
The objective of this paper was to develop a numerical algo-
rithm for the fast computation of DFrFT when the signal spec-
trum can be sparsely represented in the fractional Fourier do-
main. By recurring to the merit of SFT, we have redesigned the
Pei’s algorithm and proposed a novel approach, which signif-
icantly outperforms the existing algorithms in the runtime as-
pect. The application of the proposed SDFrFT algorithm for the
Fig. 13. Superposition of detection results over data files sequence.
fast synchronization of the high dynamic DSSS signal was then
presented. We have also proposed a SFrCAF for radar signal
processing and applied it to the coherent integration in a PCL
of the bistatic velocity are estimated as 437.2 Hz, 501.8 , system. The simulation results clearly demonstrated the appli-
and , respectively. cability of the proposed algorithm to the fast analysis of non-sta-
The effectiveness of the proposed SFrCAF is verified by the
tionary signals with a large size and sparse spectrum in the frac-
performance as shown in Fig. 12, where the motion parameters
tional Fourier domain. Our future work will concentrate on fur-
of the target are accurately estimated by SDFrFT, and a fine de-
ther optimizing the algorithm, and generalizing the method to
tection performance is achieved with a notably reduced compu-
the case of the discrete linear canonical transform.
tational complexity. By comparing the algorithm performances
shown in Figs. 12(d) and (f), the target’s amplitude in Fig. 12(f)
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
is approximately 4.9 dB higher than that in Fig. 12(d). There-
fore, we can conclude that the peak energy of the accelerating The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers
target is more concentrated with SDFrFT than with SFT, so that for their valuable comments, which have helped improve the
the target can be better distinguished from interference. It is ra- quality and clarity of this paper. Tao Shan would also like to
tional to predict that in CAF application, the advantage of SD- thank the China Scholarship Council for support.
FrFT over SFT will be more pronounced when the acceleration
is higher.
In the following, we further demonstrate target detection over REFERENCES
multiple coherent processing intervals by performing SFrCAF [1] S. C. Pei and W. L. Hsue, “Random discrete fractional Fourier trans-
form,” IEEE Signal Process. Lett., vol. 16, no. 12, pp. 1015–1018, Dec.
on a sequence of 9 consecutive data files. The length of each
2009.
data file is 0.5 s, i.e., samples, in which the first [2] J. W. Cooley and J. W. Tukey, “An algorithm for the machine compu-
3932160 samples are utilized. Then we draw the superposi- tation of complex Fourier series,” Math. Comput., vol. 19, no. 90, pp.
tion of the processing results over these data files plotted in 297–301, Apr. 1965.
Fig. 13, yielding the trajectory of the target that moves away [3] S. C. Pei, C. C. Tseng, and M. H. Yeh, “A new discrete fractional
Fourier transform based on constrained eigendecomposition of DFT
from the radar. In particular, the interval between the neigh- matrix by Largrange multiplier method,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst.
boring trace points matches the product of the target Doppler II, Analog Digit. Signal Process., vol. 46, no. 9, pp. 1240–1245, Sep.
and the length of data file, and the changing rate of the Doppler 1999.
frequency also matches the estimated acceleration. On the other [4] C. Candan, M. A. Kutay, and H. M. Ozaktas, “The discrete fractional
Fourier transform,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 48, no. 5, pp.
hand, other non-target components randomly scatter on the CAF
1329–1337, May 2000.
surface, and no connection between them can be observed. The [5] M. T. Hanna, “Fractional discrete Fourier transform of type IV based
offline data detection results have also been compared against on the eigenanalysis of a nearly tridiagonal matrix,” Digit. Signal
the recorded log of the ADS-B receiver in our experimental data Process., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 1095–1106, Dec. 2012.
acquisition system to verify their consistency with the ground [6] B. Santhanam and J. H. McClellan, “The discrete rotational Fourier
transform,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 44, no. 4, pp. 994–998,
truth. As such, through the superposition of the consecutive pro- Apr. 1996.
cessing results, we are able to clearly identify and track a weak [7] T. Erseghe, P. Kraniauskas, and G. Cariolaro, “Unified fractional
target in the presence of other strong echo components. Fourier transform and sampling theorem,” IEEE Trans. Signal
To summarize, the proposed SFrCAF is applicable to the Process., vol. 47, no. 12, pp. 3419–3423, Dec. 1999.
[8] H. M. Ozaktas, O. Ankan, M. A. Kutay, and G. Bozdagt, “Digital
detection scenarios where the data length is sufficiently large
computation of the fractional Fourier transform,” IEEE Trans. Signal
and the radial acceleration remains roughly stable during the Process., vol. 44, no. 9, pp. 2141–2150, Sep. 1996.
integration time. When SFrCAF is adopted, a relatively higher [9] S. C. Pei and J. J. Ding, “Closed-form discrete fractional and affine
integration gain can be obtained with a faster acceleration rate Fourier transforms,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 48, no. 5, pp.
of the target, and an accelerated algorithm computation can be 1338–1353, May 2000.
[10] H. Hassanieh, P. Indyk, D. Katabi, and E. Price, “Simple and prac-
achieved with a larger data length. From the implementation tical algorithm for sparse Fourier transform,” in Proc. 23rd Annu.
perspective, the inherent data-parallelism of the proposed ACM-SIAM Symp. Discrete Algorithms, Kyoto, Japan, Jan. 2012, pp.
SFrCAF, which is embodied in the computing patterns of 1183–1194.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
6594 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING, VOL. 62, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2014

[11] A. C. Gilbert, P. Indyk, M. Iwen, and L. Schmidt, “Recent develop- [35] K. P. Bentz, “Computation of the cross ambiguity function using
ments in the sparse Fourier transform: A compressed Fourier transform perfect reconstruction DFT filter banks,” Ph.D. dissertation, George
for big data,” IEEE Signal Process. Mag., vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 91–100, Mason Univ., Fairfax, VA, USA, 2007.
Sep. 2014. [36] J. E. Palmer, H. A. Harms, S. J. Searle, and L. M. Davis, “DVB-T
[12] J. Markel, “FFT pruning,” IEEE Trans. Audio Electroacoust., vol. 19, passive radar signal processing,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 61,
no. 4, pp. 305–311, Dec. 1971. no. 8, pp. 2116–2126, Apr. 2013.
[13] R. Tao, B. Z. Li, and Y. Wang, “Spectral analysis and reconstruction for [37] H. D. Griffiths and C. J. Baker, “Passive coherent location radar sys-
periodic nonuniformly sampled signals in fractional Fourier domain,” tems. Part 1: Performance prediction,” Proc. Inst. Electr. Eng.—Radar
IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 55, no. 7, pp. 3541–3547, Jul. 2007. Sonar Navig., vol. 152, no. 3, pp. 153–159, Jun. 2005.
[14] R. Tao, F. Zhang, and Y. Wang, “Fractional power spectrum,” IEEE [38] H. D. Griffiths, C. J. Baker, H. Ghaleb, R. Ramakrishnan, and E.
Trans. Signal Process., vol. 56, no. 9, pp. 4199–4206, Sep. 2008. Willman, “Measurement and analysis of ambiguity functions of off-air
[15] R. Tao, B. Deng, W. Q. Zhang, and Y. Wang, “Sampling and sam- signals for passive coherent location,” Electron. Lett., vol. 39, no. 13,
pling rate conversion of band limited signals in the fractional Fourier pp. 1005–1007, Jun. 2003.
transform domain,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 56, no. 1, pp. [39] R. Tolimieri and S. Winograd, “Computing the ambiguity surface,”
158–171, Jan. 2008. IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech, Signal Process., vol. 33, no. 5, pp.
[16] R. Tao, F. Zhang, and Y. Wang, “Sampling random signals in a frac- 1239–1245, May 1985.
tional Fourier domain,” Signal Process., vol. 91, no. 6, pp. 1394–1400, [40] C. L. Yatrakis, “Computing the cross-ambiguity function—A review,”
Jun. 2011. B.S. thesis, State Univ. of New York, Binghamton, NY, USA, 2005.
[17] R. Tao, X. M. Li, Y. L. Li, and Y. Wang, “Time delay estimation of [41] Y. Feng, T. Shan, Z. H. Zhuo, and R. Tao, “The migration compen-
chirp signals in the fractional Fourier domain,” IEEE Trans. Signal sation methods for DTV based passive radar,” in Proc. IEEE Radar
Process., vol. 57, no. 7, pp. 2852–2855, Jul. 2009. Conf., Ottawa, ON, Canada, May 2013, pp. 1–4.
[18] R. Tao, Y. L. Li, and Y. Wang, “Short-time fractional Fourier transform [42] D. W. O’Hagan, H. Kuschel, M. Ummenhofer, J. Heckenbach, and J.
and its applications,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 58, no. 5, pp. Schell, “A multi-frequency hybrid passive radar concept for medium
2568–2580, May 2010. range air surveillance,” IEEE Aerosp. Electron. Syst. Mag., vol. 27, no.
[19] E. Sejdic, I. Djurovic, and L. Stankovic, “Fractional Fourier trans- 10, pp. 6–15, Oct. 2012.
form as a signal processing tool: An overview of recent developments,”
Signal Process., vol. 91, no. 6, pp. 1351–1369, June 2011. Shengheng Liu (S’14) was born in 1987. He was
[20] A. Omid, H. Ezz, H. Haitham, A. Abhinav, K. Dina, C. P. Anantha, admitted to the Ph.D. program directly from B.S. de-
and S. Vladimir, “A 0.75-million-point fourier-transform chip for gree, exempting from the qualification examination
frequency-sparse signals,” in IEEE Int. Solid-State Circuits Conf. in the year 2010 for his exceptional performance
Dig. Tech. Papers (ISSCC), San Francisco, CA, USA, Feb. 2014, pp. during undergraduate years in Beijing Institute of
458–459. Technology, and he is currently working toward
[21] J. Schumacher, “High performance sparse fast Fourier rransform,” the Ph.D. degree. His research interests include
M.S. thesis, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 2013. fractional Fourier transform and passive bistatic
[22] S. Peleg and B. Friedlander, “The discrete polynomial-phase trans- radar signal processing.
form,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 43, no. 8, pp. 1901–1914,
Aug. 1995.
[23] S. Peleg and B. Friedlander, “Multicomponent signal analysis using
the polynomial-phase transform,” IEEE Trans. Aerosp. Electron. Syst.,
vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 378–387, Jan. 1996. Tao Shan was born in 1969. He received his B.S.
[24] T. Abotzoglou, “Fast maximum likelihood joint estimation of fre- degree from Xidian University, Xi’an, in 1991 and
quency and frequency rate,” IEEE Trans. Acoust., Speech Signal Ph.D. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology
Process., vol. 22, no. 6, pp. 708–715, Jun. 1986. in 2004. He is an associate professor with the School
[25] X. G. Xia, “Discrete chirp-Fourier transform and its application to of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of
chirp rate estimation,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 48, no. 11, Technology. Currently, he is a visiting scholar at the
pp. 3122–3133, Nov. 2000. Center for Advanced Communications, Villanova
[26] P. M. Djuric and S. M. Kay, “Parameter estimation of chirp signals,” University. He was a recipient of the first prize of
IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 2118–2126, Dec. science and technology progress awarded by the
1990. Ministry of Education in 2006 and 2007 respectively.
[27] L. B. Almeida, “The fractional Fourier transform and time-frequency His research interests include radar signal processing
representations,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 42, no. 11, pp. and complex information system theory.
3084–3091, Nov. 1994.
[28] L. B. Almeida, Dec. 2013, The Code sFFT-1.0–2.0 Package [Online].
Available: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/sFFT-1.0-2.0.tar.gz
[29] H. Hassanieh, P. Indyk, D. Katabi, and E. Price, “Nearly optimal sparse Ran Tao (M’00–SM’04) was born in 1964. He re-
Fourier transform,” in Proc. 44th Symp. Theory Comput., New York, ceived the B.S. degree from Electronic Engineering
NY, USA, Jan. 2012, pp. 563–578. Institute of PLA, Hefei, in 1985 and the M.S. and
[30] A. J. Viterbi, CDMA Principles of Spread Spectrum Communication. Ph.D. degrees from Harbin Institute of Technology,
Reading, MA, USA: Addison-Wesley, 1995. Harbin, in 1990 and 1993, respectively. In 2001,
[31] B. Hofmann-Wellenhof, H. Lichtenegger, and J. Collins, Global Posi- he was a senior visiting scholar in the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently a Professor
tioning System: Theory and Practice. Vienna, Italy: Springer, 1993.
with the School of Information and Electronics,
[32] S. M. Spangenberg, I. Scott, S. McLaughlin, G. J. Povey, D. G. Cruick-
Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China. He
shank, and P. M. Grant, “An FFT-based approach for fast acquisition
was a recipient of National Science Foundation of
in spread spectrum communication systems,” Wireless Pers. Commun., China for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2006,
vol. 13, no. 1–2, pp. 27–55, May 2000. and a Distinguished Professor of Changjiang Scholars Program in 2009. He
[33] D. Akopian, “Fast FFT based GPS satellite acquisition methods,” Proc. has been a Chief Professor of the Creative Research Groups of the National
Inst. Electr. Eng.–Radar Sonar Navig., vol. 152, no. 4, pp. 277–286, Natural Science Foundation of China since 2014, and he was a Chief Professor
Aug. 2005. of the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in
[34] H. Hassanieh, F. Adib, D. Katabi, and P. Indyk, “Faster GPS via the University during 2010 to 2012. He is currently the Vice Chair of IEEE China
sparse Fourier transform,” in Proc. ACM MobiCom, Istanbul, Turkey, Council. He is also the Vice Chair of the International Union of Radio Science
Aug. 2012, pp. 353–364. (URSI) China Council and a Member of Wireless Communication and Signal

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
LIU et al.: SPARSE DISCRETE FRACTIONAL FOURIER TRANSFORM AND ITS APPLICATIONS 6595

Processing Commission of URSI. He was a recipient of the first prize of science Guo Zhang was born in 1989. She received her B.S.
and technology progress in 2006, 2007, respectively, and the first prize of and M.S. degree from Beijing Institute of Technology
natural science in 2013, both awarded by the Ministry of Education. His current in 2011 and 2014, respectively. She is currently with
research interests include fractional Fourier transform and its applications, Beijing Telecom Planning & Designing Institute Co.,
theory and technology for radar and communication systems. He has 3 books Ltd. Her research interest is radar signal processing.
and more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Yimin D. Zhang (SM’01) received his Ph.D. degree

from the University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan, in
1988.
He joined the faculty of the Department of Radio
Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing, China, Feng Zhang (M’10) was born in 1981. He received
in 1988. He served as a Director and Technical Man- his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Zhengzhou Uni-
ager at the Oriental Science Laboratory, Yokohama, versity, Zhengzhou, in 2003 and 2006, respectively,
Japan, from 1989 to 1995, and a Senior Technical and Ph.D. degree from Beijing Institute of Tech-
Manager at the Communication Laboratory Japan, nology in 2010. Now he is an associate professor
Kawasaki, Japan, from 1995 to 1997. He was a with the School of Information and Electronics,
Visiting Researcher at the ATR Adaptive Communi- Beijing Institute of Technology. He was a recipient
cations Research Laboratories, Kyoto, Japan, from 1997 to 1998. Since 1998, of the first prize of natural science awarded by
he has been with the Villanova University, Villanova, PA, where he is currently the Ministry of Education in 2013. His research
a Research Professor with the Center for Advanced Communications, and is the interests include time-frequency analysis, digital
Director of the Wireless Communications and Positioning Laboratory and the image processing, fractional Fourier transform, and
Director of the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Laboratory. His general multirate signal processing.
research interests lie in the areas of statistical signal and array processing for
radar, communications, and navigation applications, including compressive
sensing, convex optimization, nonstationary signal and time-frequency anal-
ysis, MIMO systems, radar imaging, target localization and tracking, wireless
and cooperative networks, and jammer suppression. He has 11 book chapters Yue Wang was born in 1932. He received the B.S.
and more than 200 journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers. degree from Xidian University, Xi’an, in 1956. He
Dr. Zhang serves on the Editorial Board of the Signal Processing journal. He is an academician of both Chinese Academy of Sci-
was an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING ence and Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was
during 2010–2014, an Associate Editor for the IEEE SIGNAL PROCESSING the president of Beijing Institute of Technology from
LETTERS during 2006–2010, and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the 1993 to 1999. He is currently a professor with Bei-
Franklin Institute during 2007–2013. He is a Technical Committee Co-chair jing Institute of Technology. His research interests
of the IEEE Benjamin Franklin Symposium on Microwave and Antenna are complex system theory, radar signal processing
Sub-systems in 2014 and 2015. and information countermeasures.

Authorized licensed use limited to: Viettel Group. Downloaded on May 06,2022 at 07:36:05 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.