Experiments with cognitive radar

The application of cognitive inspired processing to radar is a fast emerging area of research that affects almost all types of radar systems. Cognition means "knowing" and is the process by which humans and animals know about the world. The cognitive process is extremely complicated and applies equally to "simple" creatures, such as insects, and to humans. Although much is understood about cognition there is much more to be learned. Despite the need for more research, it is clear that humans and, perhaps more pertinently for radar systems, echolocating mammals, are able to sense and interact with their environment in sophisticated ways that are beyond the capabilities of man-made systems. In the simplest of terms, cognitive radar could be thought of as a system of hardware and software in which the transmit and receive parameters (such as power, pulse length, pulse repetition frequency (PRF), modulation, frequency and polarization) are selected, in real-time, in response to the observed scene to optimize performance for a given application.