Networked staring radar testbed for urban surveillance: Status and preliminary results

Mohammed Jahangir*, George Atkinson, Daniel White, D. Griffiths, Xiaofei Ren, Joseph P. Wayman, Chris Baker, Jon Sadler, Jim Reynolds, Michail Antoniou

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Mapping and characterising low to medium airspace in an urban setting using radar presents significant challenges, especially for low observable targets such as drones and birds. The task of detecting, locating, tracking and identifying such small, low and slow targets, in dense clutter requires adaptation of both radar hardware and the processing algorithms. We are creating a testbed of two L-band staring radars at University of Birmingham (UoB) to understand how novel radar architectures help us to meet these challenges. Each radar uses a floodlight beam on transmit and has a fully digitised 64-element receiver array. The fully flexible beam-forming and persistent dwell enable high sensitivity and fine Doppler that is sufficient to detect and classify small drones out to a range of several kilometres. The testbed will enable the collection of extensive datasets to support machine learning techniques for classification of targets along with long-term monitoring and mapping of bird activities in an urban environment. An ultra-low phase noise Quantum oscillator will be used to replace the conventional oscillator in the radar and also act as a master clock to synchronise the two systems. The testbed will be used to investigate monostatic, bistatic and multistatic processing techniques and thereby provide an invaluable resource for supporting research in a range of industrial applications for ultra-low phase noise multistatic radar, and to showcase these in operationally realistic conditions. This paper highlights some of the challenges in installing the radar at the UoB campus and initial benchmarking results from field trials are presented from both radar systems that are now fully operational.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Radar Systems (RADAR 2022)
PublisherInstitution of Engineering and Technology (IET)
Pages471-476
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781839537776
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Feb 2023
EventInternational Conference on Radar Systems (RADAR 2022) - Murrayfield Stadium, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Duration: 24 Oct 202227 Oct 2022
Conference number: CP804

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Radar Systems

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Radar Systems (RADAR 2022)
Abbreviated titleRADAR 2022
Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
CityEdinburgh
Period24/10/2227/10/22

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