MIMO Radar Based Smart Electronic Bumper

Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar has been attracting significant interest in recent years. One of the most promising application areas of MIMO radar is to develop MIMO radar based smart electronic bumpers to overcome rotorcraft brownout challenges that can cause major landing mishaps. MIMO radar based electronic bumpers offer the advantages of enhanced resolution and sensitivity, lightweight, compact, and low cost RF sensing, which is urgently needed for the detection and tracking of obstacles and hazards during rotorcraft brownout approaching and landing. The main concentration of our proposed research is on the development of MIMO radar based smart electronic bumpers. Our goal is to provide “see-through” MIMO radar based sensing systems that are capable of down-looking three-dimensional (3-D) imaging for obstacle (e.g., wire, pole, building) detection, forward-, backward-, and side-looking hazard (e.g., pole) detections, drift detection and velocity estimation, and altitude and ground slope determination. We also investigate ways to display the information in a format usable to a pilot performing a rotary wing landing.