  Identification of time-varying linear systems, which introduce both
time-shifts (delays) and frequency-shifts (Doppler-shifts), is a central task
in many engineering applications. This paper studies the problem of
identification of underspread linear systems (ULSs), whose responses lie within
a unit-area region in the delay Doppler space, by probing them with a known
input signal. It is shown that sufficiently-underspread parametric linear
systems, described by a finite set of delays and Doppler-shifts, are
identifiable from a single observation as long as the time bandwidth product of
the input signal is proportional to the square of the total number of delay
Doppler pairs in the system. In addition, an algorithm is developed that
enables identification of parametric ULSs from an input train of pulses in
polynomial time by exploiting recent results on sub-Nyquist sampling for time
delay estimation and classical results on recovery of frequencies from a sum of
complex exponentials. Finally, application of these results to super-resolution
target detection using radar is discussed. Specifically, it is shown that the
proposed procedure allows to distinguish between multiple targets with very
close proximity in the delay Doppler space, resulting in a resolution that
substantially exceeds that of standard matched-filtering based techniques
without introducing leakage effects inherent in recently proposed compressed
sensing-based radar methods.
