AESA-based RADAR Performance in Complex Sensor Environments

Active electronically scanned array (AESA) multi-function radar systems require resource management and scheduling to realize their full performance capabilities. Many tasks compete for resources. Some resources, such as the round trip propagation or waiting time are reusable (we can transmit in another direction while waiting) while other resources, such as the receive time, are not even preemptible. Real-time optimum scheduling that maximizes a quality-of-service metric called utility under fixed resource constraints is not computationally feasible. Recent real-time computer systems research, however, has produced feasible approximations to optimum scheduling, even in complex dynamic environments. We propose to apply these techniques to airborne AESA-based radar systems of interest to the Navy.