Advanced Monostatic and Bistatic Target Location Estimation Techniques

GMTI radar systems have long been plagued by poor cross range (azimuthal) resolution due to the long standoff range of the sensors and the limitations of aperture size and beamwidth. This problem is especially true at UHF frequencies due to the large physical aperture required to achieve reasonable beamwidths. ISL proposes a coherent sparse sensor network that will vastly improve both angle and range resolution of GMTI systems while limiting the required system bandwidth. In fact, a key advantage of the proposed technique is that the target localization achievable, both in range and cross range, is not limited by the bandwidth or aperture of the individual receiver systems employed in the sensor network. The objective of this program is to develop and demonstrate improved target location estimation based on coherent sparse aperture techniques for UHF GMTI radar. This will include an analysis of the expected system performance and the impact of system errors and real-world propagation and scattering on this performance. Phase I will conclude with a proof-of-principle demonstration of the concept based on site-specific simulations.