An Ontology for Spaceborne Radar Debris Detection and Tracking: Channel-Target Phenomenology and Motion Models

Following governmental strategies to acquire “…capability to watch for objects and natural phenomena that could harm satellites in orbit,” a number of ground-based radars (GBRs) have been deployed for space situational awareness (SSA). In particular, networks of GBRs support the characterization of possible collision trajectories for different types of debris against orbital assets. On the other side, despite increasing demands for augmenting space-based monitoring capabilities for near-earth SSA, there is no evidence of operative SpaceBorne Radars (SBRs) for debris detection and tracking. In the absence of experimental data, one may ponder the design of a novel SBR payload transceiver with specific benefits for SSA, especially if compared to GBRs inference capabilities. In line with this reasoning, this article provides, for the first time, a holistic and harmonizing ontological framework for possible environmental scenarios that an SBR may have to cope with. The objective of such an ontology is related to the conceptual modeling of both channel and target phenomenology as well as target motion models. This, in turn, paves the way for reasonable mathematical formulations and architectural paradigms for framing SBR-based detection and tracking techniques, mostly with respect to small-size hypervelocity targets.