Environment-adaptive radar techniques

This report describes the work performed in the first year of a contract to investigate the measurement and mitigation of environmental effects in a selected modern radar system. The baseline system is a mobile ground-based tactical radar system which performs wide-area surveillance for aircraft targets as well as multiple target tracking for eventual handover. The dominant technical problem is found to be the blind-speed problem. A computer-automated design procedure is therefore developed. It is found that, by subdividing the search area into two range zones, it is possible to develop solutions at S-band and higher frequencies. An environment-adaptive radar that incorporates the computer-automated design algorithms is designed to the block diagram level, and the algorithms are detailed in FORTRAN code. Plans for the next phase of the contract include simulations, sensitivity studies, and the design of the environmental sensor and its integration into the radar system.