UWB Perimeter Surveillance

This program will develop an automated and unmanned ultra-wide band (UWB) perimeter surveillance sensor designed to provide detection and tracking of personnel and vehicles at the perimeter of critical areas such as military installations and other such facilities. This effort describes the work being done for the protection of high value assets using a compact system which incorporates two technologies to enhance the probability of detection in stressing environments     

Implementing digital terrain data in knowledge-aided space-time adaptive processing

Many practical problems arise when implementing digital terrain data in airborne knowledge-aided (KA) space-time adaptive processing (STAP). This paper addresses these issues and presents solutions with numerical implementations. In particular, using digital land classification data and digital elevation data, techniques are developed for registering these data with radar return signals, correcting for Doppler and spatial misalignments, adjusting for antenna gain, characterizing clutter patches for secondary data selection, and ensuring independent secondary data samples. These techniques are applied to select secondary data for a single-bin post-Doppler STAP algorithm using multi-channel airborne radar measurement (MCARM) program data. Results with the KA approach are compared with those obtained using the standard sliding window method for choosing secondary data. These results illustrate the benefits of using terrain information, a priori data about the radar, and the importance of statistical independence when selecting secondary data for improving STAP performance     

Signal processing of wide bandwidth and wide beamwidth P-3 SAR data

This research is concerned with multidimensional signal processing and image formation with FOliage PENetrating (FOPEN) airborne radar data which were collected by a Navy P-3 ultra wideband (UWB) radar in 1995. The digital signal processors that were developed for the P-3 data commonly used a radar beamwidth angle that was limited to 35 deg. Provided that the P-3 radar beamwidth angle (after slow-time FIR filtering and 6:1 decimation) was 35 deg, the P-3 signal aperture radar (SAR) system would approximately yield alias-free data in the slow-time Doppler domain. We provide an analysis here of the slow-time Doppler properties of the P-3 SAR system. This study indicates that the P-3 database possesses a 50 deg beamwidth angle within the entire [215, 730] MHz band of the P-3 radar. We show that the 50-degree beamwidth limit is imposed by the radar (radial) range swath gate; a larger beamwidth measurements would be possible with a larger range swath gate. The 50-degree beamwidth of the P-3 system results in slow-time Doppler aliasing within the frequency band of [444, 730] MHz. We outline a slow-time processing of the P-3 data to minimize the Doppler aliasing. The images which are formed via this method are shown to be superior in quality to the images which are formed via the conventional P-3 processor. In the presentation, we also introduce a method for converting the P-3 deramped (range-compressed) data into its alias-free baseband echoed data; the utility of this conversion for suppressing radio frequency interference signals is shown     

Analog clutter cancellation algorithms for dynamic range reduction

A technique that effectively reduces the dynamic range of the input signal in a radar receiver prior to digitization is presented. The dynamic range reduction is accomplished through a process that predicts the next radar return signal from the previous return signals, generates a replica waveform, and subtracts this replica waveform from the radar return signal prior to digitization. This process allows the radar return signal to be digitized without distortion by an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) having a limited dynamic range. The full dynamic range of the radar return signal is then restored by adding the replica waveform to the ADC output. Test and evaluation results using both synthetic and recorded radar data demonstrate in excess of a 30-dB reduction in the dynamic range of the signal at the ADC input when strong clutter is present     

Editorial: Topical Collection on Multi-Point Measurements of the Thermosphere with the QB50 Mission

Space Science Reviews - Part of the InSight mission, the SEIS instrument (Seismic Experiment for Interior Structures), is planned to arrive on Mars in November 2018. In order to prepare its future...