GRS 2002: German Radar Symposium in Bonn, Germany

The German Radar Symposium (GRS 2002), organized jointly by the German Institute of Navigation (DGON) and by the Information Technology Society (VDE-ITG), attracted wide interest in the international radar community. It was held from September 3-5, 2002, in Bonn, the former capital city of Germany. The GRS 2002 programme covered a large scale of important radar topics. All classical topics like air traffic control, CFAR, antenna technology, signal processing and simulation papers have been presented and new results were demonstrated. These topics were combined with new applications like meteorology, subsurface, and automotive to underline the increase of interest in radar technology. Phased array antennas are the key elements of high performance multi-function radar systems which are studied all over the world. SAR and ISAR are, nowadays, essential radar techniques for civil and military observation and monitoring.     

Radar CFAR Thresholding in Clutter and Multiple Target Situations

Radar detection procedures involve the comparison of the received signal amplitude to a threshold. In order to obtain a constant false-alarm rate (CFAR), an adaptive threshold must be applied reflecting the local clutter situation. The cell averaging approach, for example, is an adaptive procedure. A CFAR method is discussed using as the CFAR threshold one single value selected from the so-called ordered statistic (this method is fundamentally different from a rank statistic). This procedure has some advantages over cell averaging CFAR, especially in cases where more than one target is present within the reference window on which estimation of the local clutter situation is based, or where this reference window is crossing clutter edges.     

Reduction of interference from DGPS transmissions in the MF bandusing a GMSK modulation scheme

The accuracy of the Global Positioning System (GPS) can be improved by differential techniques. For maritime applications a DGPS service with transmissions by maritime radiobeacons in the MF band is provided. It offers a position accuracy of approximately 5 m. For the data link a minimum shift keying (MSK) modulation scheme has been recommended. The adjacent channel interference at the maximum transmission rate might not be consistent with existing frequency plans     

Mismatched-filter design for periodic binary phased signals

A mismatched filter design is introduced whereby the receiver filter coefficients are optimized with the property that all sidelobes of the cross-correlation function (CCF) are zero. Some results are given for binary sequences and the associated mismatched filters. For each length N>2 there exist at least one sequence and an associated mismatched filter with an ideal impulselike CCF, which means that there are no sidelobes at all in the receiver output signal