Airborne Moving Target Indication of ground and maritime targets with SmartRadar

Abstract

SmartRadar is a multi-channel radar technology demonstrator aimed for airborne and spaceborne ground surveillance and reconnaissance applications. SmartRadar (an acronym for Scalable Multipurpose Aerospace Radar Technology) is engineered by Airbus Defence and Space. An X-Band variant of SmartRadar applying a multi-channel active electronically scanned array antenna (AESA) was integrated into a wing mounted pod and EASA certified for world-wide operation on a Lear Jet 35 aircraft. Due to its flexible design SmartRadar allows the development and demonstration of various state of the art advanced radar modes such as imaging by means of High Resolution Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), or target detection by means of Ground Moving Target Indication (GMTI). Also Maritime Surveillance modes and target tracking are available. Already in 2011 the on-board processing of high resolution SAR images in near real-time was demonstrated. In 2012 and 2013 the space-time-adaptive processing (STAP) of three channel GMTI data in real-time and on-board the pod was shown successfully in several flight campaigns. Recently also the detection of maritime moving targets became a customer demanded mode. One of these modes is the so called Maritime MTI (MMTI) mode which is the equivalent of the GMTI mode, i.e. coherent processing and clutter suppression by means of STAP is applied. This paper gives some insight into the GMTI/MMTI mode and STAP processing relevant issues. Results of the flight trials in 2013 emphasize the sensor's capabilities. The SmartRadar Pod System is property of the German MOD (BAAINBw). The authors gratefully acknowledge BAAINBw for funding this work.