Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation

Daniel N Held

Martin J Decker

Elbert L Cole, Jr

Robert A Guarino

Edward F Stockburger

Hugh D Holt, Jr

Charles Y Chen

A method of operating a multibeam radar carried on a platform flying a mission over a prescribed flight path to obtain images of a plurality of target areas, the beams of said radar being the result of respective transmit pulses and beam returns being received by respective receive windows. A range of pulse repetition frequencies and pulse repetition frequency change rates are used in an iterative process to determine non-collision alignments of any combination of transmit pulses and receive windows. When a non-collision alignment is determined the particular arrangement producing that non-collision alignment is used in a simulated flight of the platform to determine dwell time before a collision occurs. An arrangement that produces sufficient dwell time to accomplish a mission is then used in an actual flight of the platform.

Method of operating a multibeam radar

An interferometric moving target radar imaging system includes a plurality of simultaneously operating apertures, receivers and processing channels which together coherently process RF return signals to image a moving vehicle. The system corrects for the different phase centers of the apertures and interferometrically combines the return signals from different apertures to attenuate the energy from stationary objects. The true azimuth location of the moving vehicle within main beam clutter spread is then determined which facilitates distinguishing between slow moving and stationary objects to detect the moving objects which are then tracked and imaged in the range doppler domain.

Interferometric moving vehicle imaging apparatus and method

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Severna Park, MD, United States of America

Daniel N Held