Patent ID: 9696419
Date: 2017-07-04
CPC Classifications: G01S,H01Q

Claim:
1. A method of providing and operating a radar system for detecting moving targets comprising: providing a cylindrical array antenna with at least one layer of array elements equally spaced around a cylinder; providing a transmit/receive module for each of the array elements; generating pulsed waveforms with phase and frequency modulation that are to be common to all active transmit/receive modules; digitally controlling the transmit/receive modules to activate a subset of the cylindrical array antenna to transmit the pulsed waveforms generated; controlling amplitude and phase of a transmit signal in each of the active transmit/receive modules in the subset of the cylindrical array antenna to form and point a respective transmit beam; receiving returns of the transmit signal in the active transmit/receive modules; controlling amplitude and phase of a receive signal in the active transmit/receive modules; down converting the received returns in each active transmit/receive module to an intermediate frequency; combining the received returns from all active transmit/receive modules at an intermediate frequency in a manifold to form a received beam; digitizing the down converted intermediate frequency return at the output of the manifold; passing the digitized down converted received returns to a digital signal processor; obtaining range resolution represented by a sequence of range samples; coherently processing a sequence of digitized radar returns to obtain Doppler resolution represented by a sequence of Doppler samples, repeated for each range sample; envelope detecting the samples in the range Doppler space; comparing the envelope detected samples with at least one threshold for detection of the moving targets; recording transmit/receive beam positions of detected moving targets; comparing detected moving targets with previously detected targets already in track, check for range ambiguities, and update track files; displaying the tracked targets on a computer monitor; displaying stationary returns in a background mode; repeating the process for all transmit/receive beam positions that constitutes a scan; and, changing waveform repetition frequency on alternate scans to resolve range and Doppler ambiguities.