Analysing multibeam, cooperative, ground based radar in a bistatic configuration

Recent advances in digital beam forming for phased arrays in combination with digital signal processing should enable the development of multibeam radar in a bistatic configuration. In the bistatic setting, the pulse travelling outward from the transmitter should be followed or “chased” by the receiver. During transmission, depending on the...

Early development of phased array radar and active antennas in the Netherlands

This paper addresses the early developments that have resulted in the design and development of active electronically scanned arrays (AESA) in The Netherlands. An early type of radar measuring the position of objects in range, azimuth and elevation in three dimensions (SPS-01/MTTR) is described in some detail. Requirements of the Royal...

Circular Micro-SAR for mini-UAV

This paper presents a new multifunction radar that was specially designed for mini-UAV platforms. The multi-channel radar is omnidirectional, allowing great flexibility in radar- and flight operations. A demonstrator has been built, weighing 800 grams, and consuming 25 W. Flexible SAR, GMTI and novel sensing modes can be demonstrated with this...

Beamformer with constant-Gm vector modulators and its spatial intermodulation distortion

Spatial interference rejection in analog adaptive beamforming receivers can improve the distortion performance of the circuits following the beamforming network, but is susceptible to the nonlinearity of the beamforming network itself. This paper presents an analysis of intermodulation product cancellation in analog active phased array receivers...

Real-time processing of multi-channel SAR data with GPUs

AMBER: An X-band FMCW digital beam forming synthetic aperture radar for a tactical UAV

An X-band Digital Array Synthetic Aperture Radar for a Short Range Tactical UAV is presented. This system is demonstrated on a manned helicopter and motor glider. The Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave radar principle in combination with digital beam forming over 24 receive channels is used to meet the stringent payload requirements of Tactical...

FMCW radar for the sense function of sense and avoid systems onboard UAVs

Rockwell Collins France (RCF) radar department is currently developing, in close collaboration with TNO in The Hague, The Netherlands, a Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar sensor dedicated to Obstacle Warning function and potentially to air traffic detection. The sensor combines flood light illumination and digital beam forming to...

Multi-Channel Processing for Digital Beam Forming SAR

A lightweight radar system, suitable for use on board small airborne platforms, has been built and tested. The radar system comprises a digital receive array, offering full beam forming flexibility at the cost of high data rates and heavy processing loads. In this paper, the requirements and architecture for multi-channel SAR processing are...

Application of 2D MUSIC algorithm to range-azimuth FMCW radar data

This paper investigates the use of a 2D MUSIC algorithm for the joint estimation of angular and range target locations. Coherency and correlation characteristics of the target signals are taken into account and 2D spatial smoothing technique is preliminarily applied in order to ensure the non-singularity of the received signals covariance matrix...

High resolution transforms

The introduction of phased arrays opens-up a range of new possibilities for ultrasonic inspections. Arrays come in various shapes ranging from linear arrays for weld inspection to circular arrays emitting guided waves for permanent monitoring applications. For this kind of applications, the data is best displayed as angle versus time to locate...

Suppression of Sidelobe Scatterers in an AESA FMCW Radar

This paper describes an active electronically scanned array (AESA) FMCW radar with eight transceivers. Each transceiver has its own Direct Digital Synthesizer (DDS) for signal generation which enables digital beam forming on transmit as well as on receive. The coherent operation of the eight transceivers and the capability to perform digital...

Correction of the effects induced by the continuous motion in airborne FMCW SAR

The combination of Frequency Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) technology and Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) leads to lightweight, cost-effective imaging sensors of high resolution. In FMCW SAR applications the conventional stop-and-go approximation used in pulse radar algorithms can be not valid anymore, therefore the motion within the sweep...

Shape and Doppler corrected beamforming for low frequency active sonars

ASW operations have shifted toward shallow water environments, where water space is limited and manoeuvring an essential part of operations. The problem that is tackled in this article is the performance loss due to the shape and motion of a manoeuvring sonar. Standard beamforming in towed sonar arrays is based on the assumption that all...

Helicopter and aircraft detection and classification using adaptive beamforming and tracking techniques

Measurements of different types of aircraft are performed and used to obtain information on target characteristics and develop an algorithm to perform classification between jet aircraft, propeller aircraft and helicopters. To obtain a larger detection range, reduce background noise and to reduce classification errors in a multi-target...

Application of a maximum likelihood type estimator to the towed array shape estimation problem

At the TNO Physics and Electronics Laboratory (TNO-FEL), for a number of decades, the behaviour and performance of towed sonar systems has been studied extensively. Since the performance of towed sonars highly depends on the shape of the hydrophone array, the underwater acoustics group started performing research in this field in the 1980's....