SharpScan: Improved Resolution COTs based Small-Aperture Marine RADAR

FTL’s SharpScan is an innovative, improved-angular-resolution, COTS-based magnetron radar that is modified to be coherent-on-receive, providing access to emerging coherent-radar processing approaches for increased resolution and Doppler shift extraction. Coherent radar processing is an enabling technology that provides higher signal to noise ratio (SNR), reduces target uncertainty, and allows for the Doppler effect to be used to reduce the influence of static clutter and provide more information on each target than that can be gained without coherent returns. Utilizing Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology to perform high speed sampling and apply cutting edge digital signal processing techniques, SharpScan not only provides real time radar imaging at high resolution but also provides relative velocity as an additional degree of freedom that can prevent tracking software confusion and aid in buoy discrimination. SharpScan enables the Navy to use small, low-cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) marine radars to achieve the needed long range and high output power radar imaging for at sea navigation, but with the higher resolutions achieved in larger, more expensive radar systems. The SharpScan technology can be directly retrofitted to the presently fielded submarine navigation radar and any other magnetron-based radar system for dramatic imaging and target indication improvements, making SharpScan a high value proposition with low incremental cost.