Advanced radar modes for airborne surveillance radars

The pod integrated variant of the airborne SmartRadar by AIRBUS Defence & Space, mounted under the wing of a Learjet 35 aircraft, is used as a testbed to develop advanced radar modes. The SmartRadar comprises a multi-phase-centre active electronically steered array (AESA) antenna, a flexible, wide-bandwidth radar core, and an on-board processing unit. During the last years, established modes like synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and ground moving target indication (GMTI) have been supplemented by newly developed maritime modes, e.g. maritime moving target indication (MMTI) and Open Sea modes. This paper gives an overview of the advanced radar modes and presents results from our 2014 flight campaigns.