Adapting Radar Power Requirements to Target Presence and Range

As modern radar signal processing techniques become more advanced and responsive to rapidly identify signal parameters, it is becoming increasingly feasible to have the capability to automatically adapt radar systems requirements to a changing environment or input signal. Such an adaptive system would drastically reduce radar power requirements as a function of range when coupled with radar waveforms that are detectable with low signal-to-noise ratio and sequential detection techniques. These types of waveforms are normally used on pulse compression radars and exhibit good autocorrelation properties. Radar detection, tracking and processing techniques described herein shall emphasize the discrimination capability of this processor to identify and track orbital debris particles in space at different ranges and of various cross sections with minimum radar power requirements. Discrimination being defined as the ability of a radar to detect and track echo in the presence of multiple echos.