KEYWORDS: Radar, Signal to noise ratio, Electroluminescence, 3D image processing, 3D acquisition, Radar signal processing, 3D displays, Signal processing, Sensors, Fourier transforms
BAE Systems recently developed a rotorcraft brownout landing aid system technology (BLAST) to satisfy the urgent
need for brownout landing capability. BLAST uses a W-band monopulse (MP) radar in conjunction with radar signal
processing and synthetic display techniques to paint a three-dimensional (3-D) perspective of the landing zone (LZ) in
real time. Innovative radar signal processing techniques are developed to process the radar data and generate target data
vectors for 3-D image synthesis and display. Field tests are conducted to characterize the performance of BLAST with
MP and non-MP (only using the sum channel of the MP radar) modes in clear and brownout conditions. Data processing
and analysis are performed to evaluate the system's performance in terms of visual effect, signal-to-noise ratio (SNR),
target height estimation, ground-mapping effect, and false alarm rate. Both MP and non-MP modes reveal abilities to
sufficiently display the 3-D volume of the LZ; the former shows advantage over the latter in providing accurate ground
mapping and object height determination.
KEYWORDS: Resolution enhancement technologies, Radar, Antennas, Image enhancement, Signal to noise ratio, Image resolution, Signal processing, Target detection, Extremely high frequency, Super resolution
In this paper, two-dimensional (2D) (range and azimuth) resolution enhancement is investigated for millimeter wave
(mmW) real-beam radar (RBR) with linear or non-linear antenna scan in the azimuth dimension. We design a new
architecture of super resolution processing, in which a dual-mode approach is used for defining region of interest for 2D
resolution enhancement and a combined approach is deployed for obtaining accurate location and amplitude estimations
of targets within the region of interest. To achieve 2D resolution enhancement, we first adopt the Capon Beamformer
(CB) approach (also known as the minimum variance method (MVM)) to enhance range resolution. A generalized CB
(GCB) approach is then applied to azimuth dimension for azimuth resolution enhancement. The GCB approach does not
rely on whether the azimuth sampling is even or not and thus can be used in both linear and non-linear antenna scanning
modes. The effectiveness of the resolution enhancement is demonstrated by using both simulation and test data. The
results of using a 94 GHz real-beam frequency modulation continuous wave (FMCW) radar data show that the overall
image quality is significantly improved per visual evaluation and comparison with respect to the original real-beam radar
image.
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