Fully digital, urban networked staring radar: Simulation and experimentation

The application and uses of drones in all areas are continuously rising, especially in civilian use cases. This increasing threat requires reliable drone surveillance in urban environments. Radar is the obvious candidate with its ability to detect small objects at range, in all weather conditions. The use of an L-band networked radar for urban sensing of S-UAS targets is explored. Small echoes from S-UAS places a premium on synchronisation, which is the fundamental key for high performance networked radar. The effect of timing errors on the operation of the network radar is investigated theoretically and experimentally, and the processing tools for synchronising data based on the direct signal returns of the transmitter are developed. Also, drone detection using bistatic L-band staring radar is achieved both in simulation and then in real field trials where the SNR and detection performance are computed and analysed. The updated direct signal synchronisation method for bistatic staring radar is shown to provide comparable SNR and positional accuracy for S-UAS targets as the monostatic staring radar. The synchronisation of networked staring radar was achieved using the improved direct signal synchronisation method. This was validated in simulation and with successful detection of S-UAV targets using the networked staring radar systems on University of Birmingham campus.image