<title>HiVision millimeter-wave radar for enhanced vision systems in civil and military transport aircraft</title>

Abstract

This paper presents a guideline to meet the requirements of forward looking sensors of an enhanced vision system for both military and civil transport aircraft. It gives an update of a previous publication with special respect to airborne application. For civil transport aircraft an imaging mm-wave radar is proposed as the vision sensor for an enhanced vision system. For military air transport an additional high-performance weather radar should be combined with the mm-wave radar to enable advanced situation awareness, e.g. spot-SAR or air to air operation. For tactical navigation the mm-wave radar is useful due to its ranging capabilities. To meet these requirements the HiVision radar was developed and tested. It uses a robust concept of electronic beam steering and will meet the strict price constraints of transport aircraft. Advanced image processing and high frequency techniques are currently developed to enhance the performance of both the radar image and integration techniques. The advantages FMCW waveform even enables a sensor with low probability of intercept and a high resistance against jammer. The 1997 highlight will be the optimizing of the sensor and flight trials with an enhanced radar demonstrator.