Waveform Selection for a Scanning Radar in the Maritime Environment

#radar #modelling

Dear IEEE members and guests

The next IEEE Control, Aerospace and Electronic Systems (CAES) seminar will be on March 15^th, 2021 at 7:30pm (Adelaide time).

The speaker is Dr. Azam Mehboob from the University of South Australia. He will be presenting a seminar on:

Waveform Selection for a Scanning Radar in the Maritime Environment

Please aim to join the webex meeting before hand, so we can start on time.

https://ieeemeetings.webex.com/ieeemeetings/onstage/g.php?MTID=e644436b540629d1596e3806a1f2bacc7

Event number (access code): 130 215 3659

Further information on this seminar and others can be found on the IEEE SA website: https://r10.ieee.org/saus/

Regards

Luke Rosenberg

IEEE SA CAES Vice Chair

Abstract

Detection of slow moving targets in the maritime environment for a scanning radar can be challenging. The sea-clutter at low grazing angles has non-Gaussian amplitude statistics and the time and range varying Doppler spectra which is not significantly different than Doppler shifts of the slow-moving targets. Due to this reason, the conventional coherent detection schemes are not very effective for targets moving with relatively low radial velocity. The most commonly used approach is to deploy noncoherent detectors with both pulse-to-pulse and/or scan-to-scan processing. Other approaches include coherent processing for slowly scanning radars and pulse-to-pulse frequency agility which decorrelates the clutter, but restricts the processing to non-coherent.

This talk will start with a brief overview of the sea-clutter modelling. It will then discuss the impact of these detection approaches when operating under different sea-clutter conditions and will provide a guide for selecting the radar waveform that optimises the detection of slow moving targets. The key question that will be addressed is in what environmental conditions will frequency agility offer improved performance over coherent detection and what is the optimal choice of pulse-to-pulse and scan-to-scan integration lengths?

Biography

Azam Mehboob completed his B.Eng degree in Electrical and Telecommunication Engineering from National University of Science and Technology in 2005, M.S. degree in Telecommunication and Networks from Iqra University in 2013, and PhD in Information Communication Technology from the University of South Australia in 2020. During PhD, his research focus was on designing highly spectrally-efficient transmission techniques for future earth observation satellite downlinks. He is currently a Research Fellow at the University of South Australia where his work involves sea-clutter modelling and radar waveform design for optimal target detection in low grazing-angle and high-sea-state situations.

He has 13 years industry of experience in signal processing and wireless communication system design. Earlier in his career, he worked as a Design Engineer at the Centre for Advanced Research in Engineering from 2003 to 2008 before co-founding a communication and embedded system company Renzym in 2008. During his professional career, he has designed waveforms for MIMO-OFDM systems, VHF/HF digital tactical radios, satellite modems, telemetry systems, ground surveillance and acoustic radars. His core expertise are in signal detection, signal constellation optimization, digital predistortion, carrier and timing synchronization, radar signal processing, MIMO-OFDM system design and automatic gain control.