Innovative Sensing Techniques for Urban Operations

Black River Systems Co., Inc. and EnerLab, Inc. propose to investigate and develop advanced signal processing techniques necessary for radar detection, imaging and characterization of dismounts in urban environments. We will investigate the feasibility of developing, testing, and implementing a conceptually new signal processing technique, Spatial-Temporal Differential Analysis, which will reliably detect weak, slowly moving targets and to extract unique characteristics in extremely hostile urban environments. This technique provides significant additional sensitivity, flexibility in bandwidth and polarization, and time occupancy benefits for existing GMTI radar systems, as well as for future distributed radar architectures. The developed technique will provide a rapid insertion capability into existing, stand-alone radars, including coarse resolution monopulse radars, featuring computationally efficient, parallel digital signal processing. The technique does not require changes to existing radar designs, utilizes existing A/D digital outputs, is considered as a complementary technique to existing radar signal processing and can be implemented in parallel with existing signal processing. Based on preliminary results, the STDA technique promises to be fully robust to a wide variety of environments. We propose a comprehensive program to analyze and model dismounts and to apply STDA techniques to ensure detection and characterization of their signatures in urban environments.