Development of Advanced Radar Technologies for Missile Defense

Missile Defense radar applications require high measurement resolution and accuracy. An essential characteristic necessary for high radar measurement performance is high effective bandwidth. High radar bandwidth is universally desired in most all radar applications, however, it is only desirable in terms of performance; generally wide BW hardware designs are more expensive to develop, produce and maintain. In this Phase 1 program, the Stepped-Frequency pulse compression technique is analyzed for its technical performance and its feasibility and cost for implementation in large-scale Active Electronically Steered Array antennas. This program's focus is not to define "plug-in" modifications for existed systems, but to evaluate the merit of this radar architecture for future developments. If promising results are obtained in this effort, a Phase 2 program is planned for the development of a high fidelity radar emulation capability that will allow detailed radar architecture and algorithm evaluation.