Advanced Radar Concepts For Small (Tier I/II) RPAs

ABSTRACT: Tactical use of remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs) has expanded rapidly, as the increasing reliability and performance of both the aircraft and their sensor payloads have significantly improved warfighter situational awareness (SA). A key capability required by warfighters, particularly in today"s asymmetric conflicts, is detection, identification, and tracking of widely dispersed dismounted adversaries. Recent evolution of radar system implementations down to sizes employable on small RPA platforms offers new capabilities in mission execution that hold potential for significant improvements in battlefield SAnamely, spectrum-agile EO/IR/SAR imaging & change detection dynamically cross-cued with effective GMTI. A minimum set of functionality, however, must be provided in order to enable an effective capability to the warfighter, so that the payload may produce timely, reliable reports of battlefield activitythis will require new operational concepts and innovation in real-time signal processing, all while adhering to the tight size, weight, and power (SWaP) constraints of small RPA platforms. Trident proposes the development of a complete sub-10lb, multi-band SAR/GMTI payload based on our proven modular radar architecture. This work includes development of effective mission CONOPs, requirements analysis, architecture mapping, functional and SWaP allocation, algorithm selection, performance analysis, preliminary design, and Phase II prototype and test plan development. BENEFIT: The successful development of a multi-mode, multi-band small-SWaP RPA radar payload will significantly improve situational awareness for the battlefield commander by enabling the small RPA platform to provide persistent mover detection and tracking over a much larger area than with EO/IR sensors alone. The effective implementation of this innovative technology will provide this reliable, timely situational awareness information via existing and familiar standards-based messaging and communications methods, minimizing operational concept changes brought on by introduction of new sensor modalities and capabilities. These new capabilities are not only useful in the tactical military environment, but also in border security for homeland defense, and in emergency/disaster response and search & rescue applications.