Low-Cost Chaos Radar

Propagation Research Associates, Inc., (PRA) and Duke University propose to extend the recent developments of matched filtered chaos into a low-cost high range-resolution chaotic waveform radar. In the Phase I effort, PRA and Duke will design the radar system and build a prototype waveform generator that will exploit three essential properties of chaotic waveforms that can be applied to enhance radar performance in specific mission areas. The first property is flexibility in that chaotic waveforms can support both homodyne and heterodyne architectures, which allows these waveforms to be implemented in any radar design. The second property is orthogonality, which allows the use of multiple simultaneous chaotic waveforms due to low cross correlation of distinct chaotic waveforms. Finally, the third property is indetectability, which results from the randomness of the waveforms that spread the spectrum for low probability of intercept. PRA and Duke propose to exploit these three properties to design a cost-effective chaos radar for a specific mission.