Suchergebnisse

Radar (RAdio Detection And Ranging) uses radio waves to detect the presence of a target and measure its position and other properties. This sensor has found many civilian and military applications due to advantages such as possible large surveillance areas and operation day and night and in all weather. The contributions of this thesis are within applied signal processing for radar in two somewhat separate research areas: 1) radar with array antennas and 2) radar with micro-Doppler measurements. Radar with array antennas: An array antenna consists of several small antennas in the same space as a single large antenna. Compared to a traditional single-antenna radar, an array antenna radar gives higher flexibility, higher capacity, several radar functions simultaneously and increased reliability, and makes new types of signal processing possible which give new functions and higher performance. The contributions on array antenna radar in this thesis are in three different problem areas. The first is High Resolution DOA (Direction Of Arrival) Estimation (HRDE) as applied to radar and using real measurement data. HRDE is useful in several applications, including radar applications, to give new functions and improve the performance. The second problem area is suppression of interference (clutter, direct path jamming and scattered jamming) which often is necessary in order to detect and localize the target. The thesis presents various results on interference signal properties, antenna geometry and subarray design, and on interference suppression methods. The third problem area is measurement techniques for which the thesis suggests two measurement designs, one for radar-like measurements and one for scattered signal measurements. Radar with micro-Doppler measurements: There is an increasing interest and need for safety, security and military surveillance at short distances. Tasks include detecting targets, such as humans, animals, cars, boats, small aircraft and consumer drones; classifying the target type and target activity; distinguishing between target individuals; and also predicting target intention. An approach is to employ micro-Doppler radar to perform these tasks. Micro-Doppler is created by the movement of internal parts of the target, like arms and legs of humans and animals, wheels of cars and rotors of drones. Using micro-Doppler, this thesis presents results on feature extraction for classification; on classification of targets types (humans, animals and man-made objects) and human gaits; and on information in micro-Doppler signatures for re-identification of the same human individual. It also demonstrates the ability to use different kinds of radars for micro-Doppler measurements. The main conclusion about micro-Doppler radar is that it should be possible to use for safety, security and military surveillance applications.

Terrain-scattered interference (TSI), that is, jammer signals reflected on the earth's surface, is a significant problem to military airborne radar. In auxiliary beam TSI suppression, the TSI in the main radar beam is estimated by a single or several auxiliary beams and is subtracted from the main beam channel. The signal to subtract is the auxiliary beam signals fed through an estimate of the 'reflection system', which describes scattering on the surface. The authors first present results on the structure of this TSI suppression, on the estimation of the reflection system and on the quality of the estimate. Then the authors derive theoretical expressions for the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) and the remaining TSI power for a single auxiliary beam. Since the SINR is directly connected to the radar performance, it can be seen what factors affect the performance and how. It was noted that when the estimated reflection system is missing one or more delays of the true system, the TSI filter cannot suppress the TSI signal completely. This phenomenon, which is called 'TSI leakage', has a very large impact on the performance. The SINR cannot be kept constant. Instead, an 'SINR improvement' can be defined.