Simulation and Adaptive Aperture Allocation for All-Digital Phased-Array Radar

Abstract

Increased flexibility afforded by all-digital radar architectures and operational concepts such as MIMO radar can be leveraged with new waveforms and aperture allocation methods to improve radar performance in diverse situations. A phased-array/MIMO continuum of operation is possible through all-digital architectures and further increases the degrees of freedom for adaptive-transmit radar. This thesis describes modeling this flexibility provided by all-digital radar and initiates potential strategies for waveform designs and aperture segmentation for improved performance for tracking and detection in target-dense environments. These initial strategies leverage information from previous target measurements to predict the return strength for future configurations. By the careful definition of possible configurations and beam-steering directions, the performance predictions can be condensed into a manageable profit metric. The profit metric implemented in this thesis favors configurations that are expected to produce some minimally required signal to noise ration (SNR) while still providing meaningful target insight. By utilizing sub-sets of the normally required resources, other resources are freed for additional tasks, improving efficiency. The proposed allocation method requires high SNR for effective operation, which may be difficult to achieve in real systems. However, the goal of the allocation method is to provide initial strategies for allocation and parameter condensation that may mature into methods without this high SNR requirement. More sophisticated methods using similar strategies with additional consideration for environmental noise and interference may develop as MIMO radar matures.