Space-based radar signal processing demonstrator: preliminary experimental results

Space-based radar (SBR) is capable of providing flexible wide-area coverage of air, land, and sea targets. A real-time demonstrator system has been developed to carry out experiments that will be used to evaluate the performance of the SBR under a variety of system and environmental configurations; the demonstrator system is called the SBR signal processing demonstrator (SPD) system. Some preliminary simulation results are presented pertaining to three different experiments, when a phased array antenna is employed as the primary sensor. In the first experiment, the performance of displaced phase centre antenna (DPCA) is examined in terms of its ability to detect slow-moving targets in mainbeam and sidelobe clutter. In the second experiment, the performance of ECCM techniques is examined in the presence of clutter. Finally, the third experiment examines the impact on the system performance as a function of the grazing angle associated with the surveillance fence.