Innovative Air and Surface Strike Weapons Technology

"The SBIR Phase I task investigated the application of commercialFM-CW radar technology to the development of a low cost seekerfor guidance of an air-ground weapon. The use of a 76.5 GHz FM-CWradar seeker for an anti-armor weapon has been studied because ithas the potential for significantly lower cost than other typesof radar. This is based on the premise that the midcourseguidance of the dispensing missile and the weapon can initiatethe seeker within a 650 meters cross range at 1 km range to thetarget. The FM-CW radar satisfies the signal-to-noiserequirement to detect a 10 m¿ target at 1 km range with a 4.25"antenna that fits in a 5" weapon. The FM-CW waveforms have beendeveloped and tested at STS that provide range resolution from1.5 meter for search to 0.3 meter (1 foot) for acquisition,verification, and potentially target identification. A directdigital synthesizer has been developed and tested that generatesthe FM-CW waveform with excellent stability and almost perfectlinearity. A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) processor implementedin a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) has demonstrated rangeresolution of one foot. If the speed of the weapon approachessupersonic, it moves one foot during the time for the FFT toprocess the data for one-foot resolution. This would smear theimage of the target. This smearing can be avoided by additionalprocessing in the DSP, so the one-foot resolution can bemaintained even if the weapon has high