Polarimetric Radar Technology for European Defence Superiority - the PolRad Project

The benefits of polarimetric radar technologies are addressed and respective technology gaps are identified for a variety of applications in radar and electronic warfare. Examples of fully polarimetric data processing are provided for FOPEN applications on real data, making use of Polarimetric Whitening Filtering (PWF) with subsequent Polarimetric Matched Filter (PMF) techniques as well as for Polarimetric Space Time Adaptive Processing (Pol-STAP) on simulated data. The performance advantages of these polarimetric approaches are demonstrated and compared with classical processing schemes. Part of these results were elaborated within the framework of the PolRad project, funded by the European Defence Agency (EDA), with the aim to demonstrate the benefits of polarimetric radar technology in defence scenarios for target classification, target detection and tracking of man-made object in vegetated environment as well as for the usability for Electronic Support Measures. Finally in this context a potential outlook is given in terms of technology and timelines for polarimetric applications.