Optical Processor Architectures for Increasing the Range Extent and Range Bins in Range-compressed Radar Images

The missile defense mission will require wideband radars to perform target imaging, discrimination, and kill assessment of incoming vehicles in real time. Wideband radars generally produce range-compressed images with fine range resolution (< 1m), a relatively small number of range bins (1000 to 2000), and thus a small range extent or range gate. However, there are applications within the missile defense mission that may require a much wider range extent while retaining fine resolution, and thus a correspondingly larger number of range bins (e.g., 10,000 to 100,000). The requirement to generate a large number of range bins from a wideband radar pulse (~1 GHz bandwidth) places extreme demands on the return pulse processor. Essex Corporation has previously developed an Advanced Optical Processor (AOP) with 1 GHz bandwidth and 2000 range bins. A feasibility study was performed under a phase 1 SBIR contract that identified an alternate architecture that would meet an increase in range extent of 10x to 100x. This proposed effort is to perform the detailed design of this prototype processor. Fabrication and testing of the processor is also included.