Potential enhancements to the performance of ASDE radars derived from multistatic radar principles

Airport surface surveillance systems, such as airport surface detection equipment (ASDE) radars, are susceptible to multipath propagation and scattering effects that can result in the placement of false targets located at critical locations on airport surfaces such as runways and taxiways. Such false targets can readily compromise the performance of these radars and lead to highly undesirable controller reactions, including unnecessarily aborting landing and takeoff operations when such multipath false targets are located on runways. These situations affect the efficiency of operations and also reduce user confidence in ASDE radar and related systems, thereby adversely affect safety. Evaluation of this problem led to consideration of enhancing ASDE radar performance by transforming the current monostatic radar to a multistatic configuration (ASDE-MP). Multistatic radar provides for multiple detection of targets as well as significant differential responses to the multipath scattering phenomenon responsible for false target detection. The latter property diminishes the detection of false targets by combining information from a number of radar receivers, positioned at different locations to provide surveillance over common areas of interest on the airport surface.