Efficient Adaptive Beamforming for Missile Defense Radars

The detection and classification of reentry vehicles in the presence of jammers and clutter is a very important missile defense radar problem. High resolution, wideband adaptive beamforming (ADBF) is an important solution component in which both the transmit and receive beamforming weight vectors are dynamically updated to optimize performance in a time varying jammer and clutter environment. An important constraint on wideband ADBF performance is the high cost of current radar system implementations. During Phase I, Applied Radar will use an extensive beamforming technology base to demonstrate that a wide band, minimum variance, diagonally loaded adaptive beamformer architecture can be integrated into a low-cost, high speed digital beamformer. This research builds on our previously developed innovative, scaleable beamformer architecture. During Phase II, the beamformer hardware will be programmed and interfaced to an array such as an MDA SPEAR panel and the predicted performance demonstrated. Using realistic unclassified engagement scenarios, we will quantify the improvements in missile defense enabled by our technology. We have identified two technology transition paths, one military and the other commercial. We are teamed with a university partner actively engaged in commercial wireless research. We are also supported by an MDA prime radar development contractor.