Research in Ground-to-Air Microwave Imaging.

Abstract : Many potential applications exist for high resolution radar such as direction finding, high accuracy tracking, target counting, and high resolution radar imaging. All of these applications require the use of large, thinned, random or periodic antenna arrays. Many uncertainties exist in such large antenna systems. For example, exact element positions are generally not known because of surveying problems or flexing of the large antenna structure. Adaptive beamforming (ABF) is the solution to the unusual design that achieves these objectives. It deduces the errors in the locations of the receivers that are distributed around the airport or on the air frame and automatically compensates for them in the image processing. This year's work concentrated on three tasks. The first was to develop a generalized ABF theory for the class of spatial correlation algorithms. The second was to extend thc resolution of a microwave imaging radar to 15 cm, and the third was to study enhanced target detection sensitivity and target recognition. (MM)