Development and performance evaluation of a multistatic radar system

Multistatic radar systems are of emerging interest as they can exploit spatial diversity, enabling improved performance and new applications. Their development is being fuelled by advances in enabling technologies in such fields as communications and Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Such systems differ from typical modern active radar systems through consisting of multiple spatially diverse transmitter and receiver sites. Due to this spatial diversity, these systems present challenges in managing their operation as well as in usefully combining the multiple sources of information to give an output to the radar operator. In this work, a novel digital Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) based coherent multistatic radar system designed at University College London, named ‘NetRad’, has been developed to produce some of the first published experimental results, investigating the challenges of operating such a system, and determining what level of performance might be achievable. Full detail of the various stages involved in the combination of data from the component transmitter-receiver pairs within a multistatic system is investigated, and many of the practical issues inherent are discussed. Simulation and subsequent experimental verification of several centralised and decentralised detection algorithms in terms of localisation (resolution and parameter estimation) of targets was undertaken. The computational cost of the DSP involved in multistatic data fusion is also considered. This gave a clear demonstration of several of the benefits of multistatic radar. Resolution of multiple targets that would have been unresolvable in a conventional monostatic system was shown. Targets were also shown to be plotted as two-dimensional vector position and velocities from use of time delay and Doppler shift information only. A range of targets were used including some such as walking people which were particularly challenging due to the variability of Radar Cross Section (RCS). Performance improvements were found to be dependant on the type of multistatic radar, method of data fusion and target characteristics in question. It is likely that future work will look to further explore the optimisation of multistatic radar for the various measures of performance identified and discussed in this work

High-latitude over-the-horizon radar applications

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2020Over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) systems that operate at high-latitudes often must contend with multipath and pronounced diffusive scattering effects produced by the anisotropic, birefringent, and heterogeneous nature of the ionosphere. In this thesis, radar performance at high-latitudes is quantified and several applications for either mitigating the deleterious effects of multipath and diffusive scattering or deriving information about the state of the ionosphere are proposed. The first application is inspired by adaptive optics techniques in other fields and involves the coherent summation of the received plane wave spectrum in order to improve angular resolution and array gain. The second application involves deriving ionospheric E x B drift from applying spatial correlation analysis to ground clutter echoes. The third application is the development of a new spatial adaptive processing technique designed specifically to preserve the Doppler spectrum of angle-Doppler coupled clutter like that observed at high-latitudes.1. Introduction -- 2. Scintillation correction in phased array high-frequency radar -- 3. Ground clutter spatial correlation analysis: transverse ionospheric drift velocity -- 4. MV-SAP: Preserving angle-doppler coupled clutter -- 5. Conclusions & future work -- Appendix: Alternative derivation of ground clutter MC

Optimisation des performances de réseaux de capteurs dynamiques par le contrôle de synchronisation dans les systèmes ultra large bande

The basic concept of Impulse-Radio UWB (IR-UWB) technology is to transmit and receive baseband impulse waveform streams of very low power density and ultra-short duration pulses (typically at nanosecond scale). These properties of UWB give rise to fine time-domain resolution, rich multipath diversity, low power and low cost on-chip implementation facility, high secure and safety, enhanced penetration capability, high user capacity, and potential spectrum compatibility with existing narrowband systems. Due to all these features, UWB technology has been considered as a feasible technology for WSN applications. While UWB has many reasons to make it a useful and exciting technology for wireless sensor networks and many other applications, it also has some challenges which must be overcome for it to become a popular approach, such as interference from other UWB users, accurate modelling of the UWB channel in various environments, wideband RF component (antennas, low noise amplifiers) designs, accurate synchronization, high sampling rate for digital implementations, and so on. In this thesis, we will focus only on one of the most critical issues in ultra wideband systems: Timing Synchronization.Dans cette thèse nous nous sommes principalement concentrés sur les transmissions impulsion radio Ultra Large Bande (UWB-IR) qui a plusieurs avantages grâce à la nature de sa bande très large (entre 3.1GHZ et 10.6GHz) qui permet un débit élevé et une très bonne résolution temporelle. Ainsi, la très courte durée des impulsions émises assure une transmission robuste dans un canal multi-trajets dense. Enfin la faible densité spectrale de puissance du signal permet au système UWB de coexister avec les applications existantes. En raison de toutes ces caractéristiques, la technologie UWB a été considérée comme une technologie prometteuse pour les applications WSN. Cependant, il existe plusieurs défis technologiques pour l'implémentation des systèmes UWB. A savoir, une distorsion différente de la forme d'onde du signal reçu pour chaque trajet, la conception d'antennes très larges bandes de petites dimensions et non coûteuses, la synchronisation d'un signal impulsionnel, l'utilisation de modulation d'onde d'ordre élevé pour améliorer le débit etc. Dans ce travail, Nous allons nous intéresser à l'étude et l'amélioration de la synchronisation temporelle dans les systèmes ULB

Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium