Discrete Scanning Low Energy-Time Product Linear Frequency Diverse Array Radar

Frequency Diverse Array (FDA) radar has low energy per beam compared to a phased array (PA) radar due to its waveform. This difference of FDA can be well compensated by the rapid angular scanning within a pulse, target temporal decorrelation diversity due to long observation time and use of the cumulative detection scheme. Here, we propose a low input energy amplitude modulated pulse transmission (TX) FDA (MFDA) for continuous scanning and also time delayed single main lobe FDA envelope modulated pulse TX FDA (DFDA) for discrete scanning. The new novel version of FDA's have considerably less energy-time product (S
_o
) compared to an equivalent PA radar leading to the same final probability of detection (P
_d
) and probability of false alarm (P
_fa
). In the TX mode the radar operates as a pulsed FDA in one dimension while it operates as a pulsed PA in the other dimension. In the receiving (RX) mode the array is full PA in all dimensions.