Ziv–Zakai Bound for UAV Monopulse Terrain Profiling
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18372/1990-5548.89.21483Keywords:
UAV radar altimetry, monopulse, Ziv–Zakai bound, terrain-referenced navigation, low-signal-to-noise estimation, threshold effect, rough-surface scattering, pulse extension, Cramér–Rao bound, Monte–Carlo simulationAbstract
A closed-form Ziv–Zakai bound for the mean-square error of UAV monopulse terrain-height estimation under rough-surface pulse broadening is derived. The delay and bearing bounds are obtained from the δ-dependent Gaussian autocorrelation and propagated through the height map. The resulting expression is valid from the prior-dominated low-SNR region to the high-SNR Cramér–Rao regime and yields an analytical threshold rule depending on δ and the matched-filter search window. Monte–Carlo simulation for SNR from −10 to 30 dB, δ from 1.0 to 2.0, and N = 16 coherent pulses shows that the bound follows the empirical RMSE within 1 dB in the threshold and asymptotic regions, while the Cramér–Rao bound underestimates the error by up to 7 dB below threshold. The derived bound therefore provides a closed-form low-SNR accuracy limit for monopulse UAV terrain profiling.
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