Development of a networked photonic‐enabled staring radar testbed for urban surveillance

Urban surveillance of slow-moving small targets such as drones and birds in low to medium airspace using radar presents significant challenges. Detecting, locating and identifying such low observable targets in strong clutter requires both innovation in radar hardware design and optimisation of processing algorithms. To this end, the University of Birmingham (UoB) has set-up a testbed of two L-band staring radars to support performance benchmarking using datasets of target and clutter from realistic urban environment. This testbed is also providing the vehicle to understand how novel radar architectures can enhance radar capabilities. Some of the challenges in installing the radar at the UoB campus are highlighted. Detailed benchmarking results are provided from urban monostatic and bistatic field trials that form the basis for performance comparison against future hardware modification. The solution to the challenge of interfacing the radar to the external oscillators is described and stand-alone bench tests with the candidate oscillators are reported. The testbed provides a valuable capability to undertake detailed analysis of performance of Quantum photonic-enabled radar and allows for its comparison with conventional oscillator technology for surveillance of low observable targets in the presence of urban clutter

Urban Clutter Analysis for Drone Detection using L-band Staring Radar

Stationary ground clutter can present a significant challenge for radar detection of moving targets particularly for low altitude slow moving small targets such as drones. In urban environments, clutter returns from collections of man-made structures can cause obscuration and introduce multipath that can interfere with the echoes of the targets of interest. Furthermore, phase noise in the presence of strong stationary clutter can lead to masking weaker signals from slow moving objects such as small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). This work focused on the analysis of urban clutter in the Birmingham area using two L-band staring radars to provide detailed characterization of clutter of a dense urban environment. Clutter maps are generated at various Doppler frequencies to understand the impact on target signal-to-noise ratio as a result of strong ground clutter. This work will provide a basis for establishing radar sensitivity against low observable targets in built up areas