Object-Oriented Radar Analysis and Simulation Building Blocks

Radar simulation is an important tool in the design and analysis of radar systems. The current state-of-the-art in radar simulation is either development of a project specific simulation or use of a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf (COTS) product. The developmentof a simulation from scratch is costly and time consuming, resulting in a capability that is often not user-friendly, understood by only the developers themselves, and not very flexible. Use of COTS products reduces development cost and time but they arefrequently difficult to customize or integrate with other tools and tend to isolate the engineer from the models. The radar analysis and simulation building blocks fill the gap between project specific simulations and existing COTS products. Thefundamental concept is building blocks that model actual objects such as a pulse, an antenna pattern, a propagation path, a reception, etc. that the engineer can assemble to create simulations at various levels of fidelity. Phase I of this Small BusinessInnovation Research (SBIR) project demonstrated the feasibility of these building blocks to provide modeling capabilities for all types of radars. Phase II will be a software development effort resulting in a MATLAB based product suitable for use invarious Missile Defense Agency (MDA) programs.