Abstract:Problem: A micromotion period estimation based on the Viterbi algorithm and the timefrequency squared difference sequence is proposed. Procedure and method: The micromotion states of the radar target is dependent on the dynamics, structure of the target, and they are usually different for different targets. As a result, the micromotion states reflect some important information of the target and can be used to aid the target detection and recognition, which has a great importance. In the research of the micromotion features, space targets such as missile are hot points. Numerous micromotion feature extraction methods for space targets are published. Usually, the motion of the space target is compound of the translation and the micromotion. The implication of the translation on the micromotion feature extraction should be considered. This work focuses on the space target with compound motion. A micromotion period estimation based on the Viterbi algorithm and the timefrequency squared difference sequence is proposed, in which the Viterbi algorithm can provide robust instantaneous Doppler estimation in low signaltonoise ratio (SNR) and the timefrequency squared difference sequence can remove the effect of the translation. Thus, the proposed method has a good performance. Results: Numerical results prove the effectiveness of the proposed method.