Super-resolution technologies for all-weather sense and avoidance (SAA) radar

The sense and avoidance (SAA) and due-regard radar systems have strict requirements on size, weight and power (SWaP) and target localization accuracies. Also, the multi-mission capabilities with both weather and hard targets are critical to the survivability of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in the next generation national airspace. The aperture limitations of the aircraft sensor installation, however, have prevented large antennas/arrays to be used. The tradeoffs among frequencies, resolutions and detection range/accuracies have not been fully addressed. Innovative concepts of overcoming the aperture limitation by using a special type of super-resolution technology are introduced. The first technique is based on a combination of thinned antenna array, an extension to the traditional Multiple Signal Classification (MUSIC) technique, and applying a two-dimensional sidelobe mitigation technique. To overcome the degradation of MUSIC-type of approach due to coherent radar signals, a special waveform optimization procedure is used. The techniques for mitigating artifacts due to "thinned" array are also introduced. Simulated results of super-resolution techniques are discussed and evaluated, and the capability of separating multiple targets within aperture-constrained beamwidth is demonstrated. Moreover, the potential capabilities of autonomous weather hazard avoidance are also analyzed.