Tactical Counter Concealment Aerial Sensors Electronic Protection (TC-CAS EP)

The Tactical Counter Concealment Aerial Sensors (TC-CAS) such as the Tactical Reconnaissance and Counter-Concealment Enabled Radar (TRACER) are designed to penetrate foliage, camouflage netting, and even structures to detect concealed targets. The systems operate in the VHF, UHF and L-band frequencies to enable the penetration capabilities. These frequency bands also contain a number of other systems as well, including commercial television and radio transmitters, two-way radios, glide-slope landing beacons, cell phones, GPS signals, and many others. These systems result in a significant amount of radio frequency interference (RFI) that significantly degrades the system performance by raising the system noise level. In addition the radar system can interfere with the other mission critical systems such as glide-slope landing beacons or SINGARS radio systems. Deliberate electronic attack (EA) is also of concern. During this effort, ISL will develop new techniques to mitigate the effects of RFI and EA including adaptive transmit waveforms, adaptive notching on receive, and space-time adaptive processing (STAP). The optimal solution will be determined and implemented in such a way as to maximize the image quality, while minimizing the impact on the system time-line.