Reciprocal radar waveforms

Digitally coded radar waveforms can be used to obtain large time-bandwidth products (pulse compression ratios). It is demonstrated that periodic radar waveforms with zero sidelobes or almost zero sidelobes can be defined. A perfect periodic code is a periodic code whose autocorrelation function has zero sidelobes and whose amplitude is uniform (maximum power efficiency=1). An asymptotically perfect periodic code has the property that as the number of elements in the code goes to infinity the autocorrelation function of the code has zero sidelobes and its power efficiency is one. The authors introduce a class of radar waveforms that are either perfect or asymptotically perfect codes. These are called reciprocal codes because they can be derived through a linear transformation of known codes. The aperiodic performance of the reciprocal code is examined     

A new CFAR sidelobe canceler algorithm for radar

Signal or target detection is sometimes complicated by the presence of strong interference. When this interference occurs mainly in the sidelobes of the antenna pattern, a solution to this problem is realized through a sidelobe canceler (SLC) implementation. Since the false-alarm probability is a system parameter of special importance in radar, an interference-canceling technique for radar application should maintain the false-alarm probability constant over a wide range of incident interference power. With the requirements of sidelobe interference cancellation and constant false alarm rate (CFAR), a new algorithm for radar detection in the presence of sidelobe interference is developed from the generalized likelihood ratio test of Neyman-Pearson. In this development, the received interference is modeled as a nonstationary but slowly varying Gaussian random process. Cancellation of the sidelobe interference is based upon a `synchronous' estimate of the spatial covariance of the interference for the range gate being tested. This algorithm provides a fixed false-alarm rate and a fixed threshold which depend only upon the parameters of the algorithm     

Reduction of sidelobe self-interference in an agile beam radar

In an agile beam phased array radar, the beam is often multiplexed over several angular positions, and “listens” in each position only over an instrumented range that may be a fraction of the unambiguous range as determined by the pulse repetition period in each position. After transmitting a pulse in a given direction, the beam is switched, essentially instantaneously, to another position, after the instrumented range delay. In this second position, echoes from the first position, from multiple trips of the instrumented range, enter the one-way angular sidelobes of the first position. This interference is compounded if there are several beam positions in a pulse repetition period. The author proposes a method of phase coding the pulses in such a way that the pulse-to-pulse phase variation in each direction is orthogonal to every other phase code in the other directions. The codes are Walsh functions. These are sets of binary valued (+1 or -1) functions such that all of the functions in the set are mutually orthogonal. Not every possible number N of pulses in each direction and number K of beam positions can be accommodated, but a large variety of such combinations can be accommodated. Several examples are given. The combination of low one-way sidelobes and orthogonality (or near orthogonality) of the phase codes should provide for very stringent sidelobe self interference rejection     

An experiment with an S-band radar using pulse compression andrange sidelobe suppression for meteorological measurements

A major technology barrier to the application of pulse compression for the meteorological functions required by a next generation ATC radar is range/time sidelobes which mask and corrupt observations of weak phenomena occurring near areas of strong extended meteorological scatterers. Techniques for suppressing range sidelobes are well known but without prior knowledge of the scattering medium's velocity distribution their performance degrades rapidly in the presence of Doppler. Recent investigations have presented a “doppler tolerant” range sidelobe suppression technique. The thrust of the work described herein is the extension of previous simulations to actual transmitted dispersed/coded waveforms using the S-band surveillance radar located at Rome Laboratory Surveillance Facility. The objectives of the experiment are: 1) to extend the verification of the simulation of the Doppler tolerant technique; and 2) to demonstrate that the radar transmitter, waveform generator, and receiver imperfections do not significantly degrade resolution, performance or reliability of meteorological spectral moment estimates     

Low altitude target model for radar simulation

A simulation model of antenna array signals from a low altitude target is considered. Explicit expressions for statistical and spectral characteristics of the scattered signals are obtained in the Kirchhoff approximation. The model permits to evaluate the efficiency of different techniques of low altitude target tracking. It benefits the comprehension of the influence of multipath propagation on tracking radars     

Low cost Doppler ratio detection radar with interclutter visibility

A low cost concept, called Doppler ratio detection (DRD), for suppressing the clutter residue of Doppler radars is described. The concept provides a simple way to establish a target detect-clutter reject threshold at each range cell, whether a MTI canceler only or a bank of Doppler filters is used. In its simplest form, the target detect/clutter reject threshold is based on the ratio of the magnitudes of Doppler-processed and non-Doppler processed signals. The experiment showed that clutter was rejected, but the amount of added degradation in detection sensitivity was not determined. This degradation will depend on a number of factors, including the number of pulses per beamwidth     

Planetary characteristics from radar observations

Conclusions Long wavelength radar observations of Venus yield a surface reflectivity of about 15%. Total power measurements at 12.5 cm and 3.6 cm strongly suggest that significant atmospheric absorption is operative in this wavelength region. If the observed low value of reflectivity at 3.6 cm is attributed to atmospheric absorption alone an opacity of = 1.14 is implied at this wavelength rather independently from assumptions concerning the surface scattering characteristics of Venus. An inverse ² opacity law for the atmosphere is consistent with the reflectivity measurements over the complete range of observations wavelengths.The mathematical characteristics of the Venusian backscatter law are the same as for the moon but wavelength-dependent mean effective slopes indicate that Venus appears smoother than the moon at all radar wavelengths.Considerable progress has been made toward obtaining a precise value for the Venusian axial rotation vector which is found to be oriented to within 10 degrees of the planet's orbital plane. The period of (retrograde) rotation lies within the range 242–250 days with the lower value favored by the statistics of the data. Regions of enhanced radar return fixed to the surface have been found and verified at a later conjunction. Measurements of the surface radar depolarization support the hypothesis that the prominences are due to increased surface roughness as opposed to regional increases of dielectric constant.Observations of Mercury strongly suggest that the rotation period of the planet is about 59 days, a conclusion which has been supported, a posteriori, by theoretical tidal calculations and rediscussions of optical observations of surface markings. Mercury has radar backscatter characteristics more similar to the moon than Venus and exhibits a reflectivity of about 5%.Mars has demonstrated strong variations of radar backscatter characteristics which appear correlated with the Martian longitude and, in turn, with the dark surface markings in its north equatorial zone. Particularly reliable correlations have been discovered with the positions of Trivium Charontis and Syrtis Major. The observed variations appear to be primarily manifested in terms of the Martian radar backscatter law or surface roughness as opposed to variations in the intrinsic surface material reflectivities although the observations are not sufficiently precise to resolve this question. Variations in surface materials are apparently also present but their degree is currently unassayable. The reflectivity of the average surface has been crudely determined to be about 7% which suggests that the surface of Mars is composed of underdense materials. The 7% value is consistent with the values of 7.5% and 5% for the moon and Mercury, respectively, and is significantly different from the 15% value for Venus,No unequivocal radar detection of Jupiter has been made although a statistically weak detection has been reported for a single opposition which could not be verified in succeeding attempts.     

Association of tracks from over the horizon radar

In Over-The-Horizon Radar (OTHR), multiple ionospheric layers cause several tracks per target to be observed. This effect causes ambiguities in target identification and track coordinate registration. A pattern classification approach is proposed for associating tracks. Neural networks and statistical methods are applied to combine track affinities and associate pairs of tracks. The proposed approach provides a practical and efficient way of dealing with multiple track association when the number of targets is large and optimal. Bayesian hypothesis testing is not practical     

Correlation filters for aircraft identification from radar rangeprofiles

The potential for identifying aircraft using one or more radar range profiles, in conjunction with a correlator, is investigated. Two types of filter which maximize the expected value of certain correlation peaks are described. The effectiveness of one type of filter was investigated in identification experiments using an extensive data set of real radar range profiles of 24 different aircraft. The results suggest that reliable identification is possible provided aircraft aspect information is used and identifications are based on multiple profiles     

Identification of ground targets from sequential high-range-resolution radar signatures

An approach to identifying targets from sequential high-range-resolution (HRR) radar signatures is presented. In particular, a hidden Markov model (HMM) is employed to characterize the sequential information contained in multiaspect HRR target signatures. Features from each of the HRR waveforms are extracted via the RELAX algorithm. The statistical models used for the HMM states are formulated for application to RELAX features, and the expectation-maximization (EM) training algorithm is augmented appropriately. Example classification results are presented for the ten-target MSTAR data set.     

The earth gravitational potential derived from satellite motion

Recent works on the determination of the earth gravitational potential by its dynamical effects to the motion of artificial satellite are reviewed. Future programs to improve the results and to detect from observations effects due to earth tide and any other time variations of the potential to the satellite motions are discussed.     

Synthetic aperture radar image formation from compressed data usinga new computation technique

A convolution technique is proposed that allows direct reconstruction of the processed synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) image from the digitally-sampled, block-encoded raw data. This computational compression technique reduces the number of arithmetic operations from that required by fast Fourier transform (FFT) convolution for SAR processing. SAR phase histories are block encoded and directly processed into an image where only arithmetic additions are required for the processing. For SAR data previously block encoded, the processing time is reduced by a factor of 100 or more. A speed-up of three times over SAR processing by FET convolution has been demonstrated when both computation of the block encoding and subsequent direct processing are included in the time. SAR image quality measurements for a method of block encoding called vector quantization at compression ration ranging from 5:1 to 50:1 show image degradation proportional to the compression ratio. For a 5:1 compression radio, image quality measurements show minimal degradation     

一种基于三维粘性流场的乘波体生成方法

为了便于乘波体的优化设计工作,本文实现了一种基于任意三维粘性流场,在激波面上截取乘波体前缘线来生成乘波体外型的设计方法,并与NASA Langley研究中心的CFL3D软件的算例结果进行了比较检验,误差满足工程计算要求.由于在流场计算中直接计入了粘性,而不像大多数的研究方法那样通过无粘计算再进行粘性修正,而且对于高超声速乘波体设计,可以在程序中考虑真实气体效应、化学反应等因素,因此本文的设计方法更接近工程实际,更具有推广价值.     

乙烯基硅橡胶生胶中低分子的脱除

由于硅橡胶是用催化平衡的方法制备，生胶中含有约3％的挥发性的低分子量环体，会对硅橡胶的热真空失重（TML）、可凝挥发物性能（CVCM）有极大影响。为使所制得的硅橡胶符合空间级材料要求，分别采用溶剂抽提法和热真空处理法来脱除乙烯基硅橡胶中的小分子，通过比较处理前后硅橡胶的分子量及其分布、TML、CVCM，对比了两种方法脱除小分子的效果；并制备得到了符合空间级标准的硅橡胶。     

轴对称近似等熵压缩流场的乘波前体优化设计

以升阻比为优化目标，在来流马赫数Ma=2—4及飞行高度H=20km-24km条件下，进行了轴对称近似等熵压缩流场的乘波前体优化设计，通过CFD验证Ma=4优化乘波体的气动特性，并研究了Ma=3优化乘波前体在非设计条件下的气动特性。结果表明：近似等熵压缩下表面的乘波前体在设计条件下具有良好的气流压缩效果，可满足机体／发动机一体化设计的需要；乘波前体升阻比在1．5—1．9之间，纵向压心位置靠后；非设计条件下，压缩波不聚焦，小于设计马赫数升阻比时降低，大于设计马赫数时升阻比略大。     

天基低轨空间监视雷达密集短弧观测数据的定轨应用研究

当天基雷达采用多波束扫描时,每次与空间目标交会可获取类似跟踪的观测数据。本文讨论了这些密集短弧观测数据在目标轨道改进中的应用。在没有测量时,采用矩阵Ricatti方程计算状态误差;引入观测数据时,比较了EKF和UKF两种滤波算法的轨道改进效果。仿真表明,UKF的收敛速度优于EKF;天基短弧观测数据可以很好地抑制误差发散,满足监视任务需求。     

低压环境下过热流体喷雾特性实验

为了研究低压环境下燃料的过热度、喷射压力和喷嘴几何结构对喷雾形状和液滴索特尔平均直径等喷雾特性的影响,测量了不同环境压力下的煤油泡点温度,并给出了环境压力和泡点温度的经验关系式。将过热的航空煤油通过直射式喷嘴喷入低压容器中,进行了不同喷射条件下的喷雾实验。使用高速摄影仪和激光粒度仪进行拍摄和测量,得到了一系列的粒子索特尔平均直径数据和喷雾图片。结果表明,过热度的增加、喷射压力的增加和喷嘴长径比的减小都能够改善煤油的喷射雾化效果。     

涡轮典型部件冷热态尺寸换算的方法研究

涡轮叶尖间隙影响发动机的性能,涡轮典型部件的冷、热态尺寸换算是间隙设计的重要内容。本文介绍了涡轮部件冷、热态尺寸换算原理,并应用优化设计方法对某涡轮叶片的冷、热态尺寸换算进行了分析,比较了优化算法与简化算法的结果。比较结果表明,优化算法的结果是合理的,此方法是可行的。最后,将优化算法应用于某涡轮盘的冷、热态尺寸换算．成功地解决了该部件的冷、热态尺寸换算问题。