Innovative Signal Processing Techniques for Mitigation of Wind Turbine Farm Interference in Airborne Radar Systems

Technology Service Corporation (TSC) proposes to further mature its promising Moving Target Focusing algorithm, which was developed and successfully demonstrated on simulated and measured airborne radar data in Phase I. Further work will be performed to customize this algorithm for the classified mode parameters of the F/A-18 APG-79 and/or other airborne Navy radar system. The objective is to develop a robust algorithm that can provide good wind turbine interference mitigation under a wide range of operational conditions, and to quantify its performance using representative simulated and experimentally collected data sets. The goal is to deliver a robust algorithm that operates on a single Coherent Processing Interval, runs in real-time on an onboard processor, does not require knowledge of wind turbines in the environment, and can handle multiple sources of wind turbine interference within the antenna main beam and/or sidelobes. TSC will validate that its algorithm enables Navy airborne radars to operate in the vicinity of wind farms with little impact on air-to-air Moving Target Indication, Synthetic Aperture Radar, or air-to-ground MTI modes. Our partner - the Space Dynamics Laboratory of the Utah State University - will collect data using the same flexible airborne X-band radar testbed used in Phase I.