Multi-Sensor Radar Processing for Unmanned Convoys

The Army often operates in environments with limited visibility, due to smoke, dust, fog, or other visual obscurants, resulting in loss of situational awareness. In some circumstances, the Army may create such environments to provide a tactical advantage over adversaries. In these situations it is necessary to supplement visual data with reliable sensors that can penetrate obscurants. Furthermore, there exists a specific need for collision avoidance sensors for assets operating in such environments. Although these technologies exist they lack the range, field of view and object discrimination required by Army operations. Phase Sensitive Innovations (PSI) proposes a novel solution based on flexible antennas on liquid crystal polymer (LCP) that conforms to the shape of a vehicle, enabling larger antennas or antenna arrays with significantly improved performance and minimal cost. PSI has a wealth of experience in LCP design and developing see-through mmW technologies. We recently demonstrated a passive imager at 77GHz for Degraded Visual Environments (DVE) mitigation during helicopter landing and the knowledge gained will be leveraged for the currently proposed effort. In this effort we will design (Phase I) and demonstrate (Phase II) a reliable, low cost, mmW detection and collision avoidance system for vehicles which operate in DVE.