Patent ID: 9599704
Date: 2017-03-21
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 one or more layers of array elements equally spaced around a respective cylinder; digitally controlling the array elements to activate a subset of the array elements at any given time; generating waveforms that are common to all active transmit array elements, the waveforms having phase or frequency modulation to provide high resolution in range; controlling amplitude and phase of the generated waveforms in each active transmit array element in the subset to collectively form and point the respective transmit beam; receiving returns from scatterers illuminated by the transmit beam at each active receive array element; controlling amplitude and phase of the received returns at the respective active receive array elements, and combining the results to form a receive beam; digitizing the combined results to form a digital representation of the radar return in the receive beam; processing the digitized radar returns to create 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 in each receive beam for each range sample; envelope detecting the range and Doppler samples; comparing the envelope detected range and Doppler samples with at least one threshold for detection of the moving targets; recording the receive beam positions corresponding to the spacing of the array elements 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 detected moving targets on a computer monitor; displaying received returns from stationary objects in a background mode; repeating the above operations for a sequence of beam positions to scan a designated sector; and changing a transmit repetition frequency on alternate scans to resolve range and Doppler ambiguities.